Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
I think there's an interesting distinction.
Schemes with a demographically limited group of beneficiaries need to manage themselves to meet their obligations, and to last until the last beneficiary pops their clogs - including legal obligations for widows and inheritances and so on.
That is different to some scheme, eg Local Authority schemes, which will essentially go on forever.
A hybrid is miners' schemes, where the industry is nearly completely gone and the mass membership are dying off. They have just had at least one scheme rebalanced so that future unnecessary assets are paid out sooner, which is fair.
Schemes from the Local Authority category should be fine to invest in illiquid assets for a part of their asset pool, since they are long term investors. Schemes with a fixed, dying-off set of beneficiaries need to be more nimble over a period of say 25 years.
The Church Commissioners and University Endowments may be an interesting comparator - both being really long term investors.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
The worst thing is when they finally do get the hang of sleeping through and you get the odd night where they don't. For some reason I find that harder than when every night was broken.
Lewis McKenzie @LewisMcKenzie94 NEW: Waste management firm Biffa has been given the go-ahead by a judge to proceed with suing the Scottish Government for around £160m over their botched deposit return scheme.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
I think there's an interesting distinction.
Schemes with a demographically limited group of beneficiaries need to manage themselves to meet their obligations, and to last until the last beneficiary pops their clogs - including legal obligations for widows and inheritances and so on.
That is different to some scheme, eg Local Authority schemes, which will essentially go on forever.
A hybrid is miners' schemes, where the industry is nearly completely gone and the mass membership are dying off. They have just had at least one scheme rebalanced so that future unnecessary assets are paid out sooner, which is fair.
Schemes from the Local Authority category should be fine to invest in illiquid assets for a part of their asset pool, since they are long term investors. Schemes with a fixed, dying-off set of beneficiaries need to be more nimble over a period of say 25 years.
The Church Commissioners and University Endowments may be an interesting comparator - both being really long term investors.
The best investment strategy is to have have had a reasonably decent one in place from about 1400. Some of the Oxbridge colleges got it right, and they have no plans for joining Lampeter.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Whether a thing is medicalised as 'addiction' or indeed anyone else is not a neutral process. Any strict criteria as between 'normal' 'medical' 'criminal' 'a matter of willpower' 'inappropriate' and so on are going to be artificial and also inconsistently applied.
Weight is a recent and developing example where it is tending to move from the 'willpower' category to the 'medical' one.
The Southport case comes to mind. To most modern fairly secular non professionals the defendant has to be 'mad' 'insane' or whatever because it is not imaginable to us (me) that a sane person cab do it. It just isn't close to what 'sane' can look like.
But to the medical and criminal system he is fine. Nothing wrong with him. I am not convinced.
Does anyone get sent to Broadmoor or Carstairs any more?
Last week’s case would likely have been sent there a decade or two ago.
(I grew up close to Broadmoor, they used to test the escape siren every week and you could hear it from miles away).
Yes. Both. Went past Carstairs just recently. Lots there. It's just that there are also thousands in the prison system who in ordinary lingo are insane.
So what’s actually changed? It seems like forever since there was a newspaper report of some sent to the mental hospital rather than for life in prison.
Is it a change in the philosophy of mental health professionals, that now leans towards calling people bad rather than mad? Or is it a change in the legal environment, that now sees whole-life (or close) sentences as routine, as opposed to people possibly getting out after 10 or 15 years for heinous offences?
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
True but the DB scheme I am in closed may years ago, is relatively small, has around 250 members (there was 1 for staff and one for works) and the age profile is skewed toward 50 plus.
That schemed really should not be investing in illiquid assets or risky assets given the age profile of its members in my view.
I think there's an interesting distinction.
Schemes with a demographically limited group of beneficiaries need to manage themselves to meet their obligations, and to last until the last beneficiary pops their clogs - including legal obligations for widows and inheritances and so on.
That is different to some scheme, eg Local Authority schemes, which will essentially go on forever.
A hybrid is miners' schemes, where the industry is nearly completely gone and the mass membership are dying off. They have just had at least one scheme rebalanced so that future unnecessary assets are paid out sooner, which is fair.
Schemes from the Local Authority category should be fine to invest in illiquid assets for a part of their asset pool, since they are long term investors. Schemes with a fixed, dying-off set of beneficiaries need to be more nimble over a period of say 25 years.
The Church Commissioners and University Endowments may be an interesting comparator - both being really long term investors.
The Govt webpage was talking about company schemes.
I agree with you on local authority schemes due to the demographics.
Lewis McKenzie @LewisMcKenzie94 NEW: Waste management firm Biffa has been given the go-ahead by a judge to proceed with suing the Scottish Government for around £160m over their botched deposit return scheme.
It's all Westminsters fault according to the hapless Lorna Slater.
I get the cab-rank rule, but you don't have to remain Shadow Attorney General while doing these things...
Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Attorney General is acting for the Russian arm of a logistics giant closely involved in one of Vladimir Putin’s pet projects.
One Essex Court’s Lord Wolfson KC, who was appointed shadow Attorney General by the new Tory Party leader in November, is instructed to defend DP World Russia FZCO in the $14bn Ziyavudin Magomedov litigation before London’s Commercial Court. The case was thrown out by Mr Justice Bright this month, largely for jurisdictional reasons, but is being appealed by Magomedov and his solicitors, Seladore Legal.
As a barrister, Lord Wolfson is constrained by the Cab Rank Rule which, according to The Bar Council, “means that barristers cannot discriminate between clients, and that they must take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated ,,. DP World Russia is working closely with Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom to help develop Russia’s “Northern Sea Route,” a project keenly supported by the Kremlin. The route has become increasingly important since the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin calling it “one of the obvious strategic priorities.” The initiative is part of the Kremlin’s plans to shift trade eastwards, running from Murmansk near Norway to the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska.” ... The House of Lords’ Code of Conduct states that “in the performance of their parliamentary duties, members of the House shall base their actions on consideration of the public interest, and shall resolve any conflict between their personal interest and the public interest at once, and in favour of the public interest.”
...you could also cite conflict of interest as, presumably, the Tory Party still supports sanctions on Russia. Anyway, fair game, if Starmer's work at the bar can be raised, so can this.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Whether a thing is medicalised as 'addiction' or indeed anyone else is not a neutral process. Any strict criteria as between 'normal' 'medical' 'criminal' 'a matter of willpower' 'inappropriate' and so on are going to be artificial and also inconsistently applied.
Weight is a recent and developing example where it is tending to move from the 'willpower' category to the 'medical' one.
The Southport case comes to mind. To most modern fairly secular non professionals the defendant has to be 'mad' 'insane' or whatever because it is not imaginable to us (me) that a sane person cab do it. It just isn't close to what 'sane' can look like.
But to the medical and criminal system he is fine. Nothing wrong with him. I am not convinced.
Does anyone get sent to Broadmoor or Carstairs any more?
Last week’s case would likely have been sent there a decade or two ago.
(I grew up close to Broadmoor, they used to test the escape siren every week and you could hear it from miles away).
Yes. Both. Went past Carstairs just recently. Lots there. It's just that there are also thousands in the prison system who in ordinary lingo are insane.
So what’s actually changed? It seems like forever since there was a newspaper report of some sent to the mental hospital rather than for life in prison.
Is it a change in the philosophy of mental health professionals, that now leans towards calling people bad rather than mad? Or is it a change in the legal environment, that now sees whole-life (or close) sentences as routine, as opposed to people possibly getting out after 10 or 15 years for heinous offences?
Hospital orders happen; the cases tend to get less attention but a number of recent homicides happen. The Nottingham triple murder is a notable recent example.
A number of prisoners who start out in prison get moved there in due course. IIRC Ian Brady and Peter Sutcliffe were among them. It would not amaze me if the Southport defendant will be another in time.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
I think there is a case for ultra low volume producers being exempted and with no end date.
There’s a great British cottage industry, related to the motorsport industry, that makes tiny volumes of some really cool cars, most of which will drive hundreds of miles a year at best on the roads.
They employ collectively thousands of people, and a fair amount of their production is exported.
If you’re Rachel from accounts, take a good look at the tens of millions in positive balances to the Exchequer that these companies produce every year.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
Having kids is weird. And selfish.
Why would you choose to create a human being who is going to suffer hardship, pain, distress, anxiety, and sadness, knowing from the moment of consciousness that they, and everyone they know and love, will die.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
I thought you were in favour of more babies (of a certain kind).
Anyway if today's youth are not up to it, then the Baby Boomers should step up to the mark and put 'baby' back into Baby Boomers. After all that generation has all the cash and, like Thatcher, don't need the sleep.
I knew someone who "lived" on the Isle of Man. Except he didn't, a complete charlatan who tried to screw my Dad over on a joint business enterprise. Anyway he himself got shook down for inflating the asset values by the business purchasers (My Dad didn't for various reasons ). He's dead now so my Dad's had the last laugh. He was loaded too - as I'd imagine plenty of manx residents are.
Whether a thing is medicalised as 'addiction' or indeed anyone else is not a neutral process. Any strict criteria as between 'normal' 'medical' 'criminal' 'a matter of willpower' 'inappropriate' and so on are going to be artificial and also inconsistently applied.
Weight is a recent and developing example where it is tending to move from the 'willpower' category to the 'medical' one.
The Southport case comes to mind. To most modern fairly secular non professionals the defendant has to be 'mad' 'insane' or whatever because it is not imaginable to us (me) that a sane person cab do it. It just isn't close to what 'sane' can look like.
But to the medical and criminal system he is fine. Nothing wrong with him. I am not convinced.
Does anyone get sent to Broadmoor or Carstairs any more?
Last week’s case would likely have been sent there a decade or two ago.
(I grew up close to Broadmoor, they used to test the escape siren every week and you could hear it from miles away).
Yes. Both. Went past Carstairs just recently. Lots there. It's just that there are also thousands in the prison system who in ordinary lingo are insane.
So what’s actually changed? It seems like forever since there was a newspaper report of some sent to the mental hospital rather than for life in prison.
Is it a change in the philosophy of mental health professionals, that now leans towards calling people bad rather than mad? Or is it a change in the legal environment, that now sees whole-life (or close) sentences as routine, as opposed to people possibly getting out after 10 or 15 years for heinous offences?
I don't know this, but it is possible that changes in medical diagnosis mean that fewer prisoners can establish a defence under the M'Naghten rule i.e. not knowing the nature or quality of the act committed. That doesn't require a value judgment so much as an analysis of comprehension.
Fortunately almost all battery storage projects now don't involve heavy metal chemistries. And are far less prone to such incidents.
If US compensation lawyers get involved, the potential bill for contamination could be quite substantial.
Shorting seems like a dangerous thing to be doing.
There’s internet rumours today that people related to the weekend’s Chinese AI thingy have been shorting NVidia, and they all made bank yesterday. Which could of course be a false flag from those who don’t want to believe that the Chinese have just done a Sputnik on the Americans.
I get the cab-rank rule, but you don't have to remain Shadow Attorney General while doing these things...
Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Attorney General is acting for the Russian arm of a logistics giant closely involved in one of Vladimir Putin’s pet projects.
One Essex Court’s Lord Wolfson KC, who was appointed shadow Attorney General by the new Tory Party leader in November, is instructed to defend DP World Russia FZCO in the $14bn Ziyavudin Magomedov litigation before London’s Commercial Court. The case was thrown out by Mr Justice Bright this month, largely for jurisdictional reasons, but is being appealed by Magomedov and his solicitors, Seladore Legal.
As a barrister, Lord Wolfson is constrained by the Cab Rank Rule which, according to The Bar Council, “means that barristers cannot discriminate between clients, and that they must take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated ,,. DP World Russia is working closely with Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom to help develop Russia’s “Northern Sea Route,” a project keenly supported by the Kremlin. The route has become increasingly important since the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin calling it “one of the obvious strategic priorities.” The initiative is part of the Kremlin’s plans to shift trade eastwards, running from Murmansk near Norway to the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska.” ... The House of Lords’ Code of Conduct states that “in the performance of their parliamentary duties, members of the House shall base their actions on consideration of the public interest, and shall resolve any conflict between their personal interest and the public interest at once, and in favour of the public interest.”
...you could also cite conflict of interest as, presumably, the Tory Party still supports sanctions on Russia. Anyway, fair game, if Starmer's work at the bar can be raised, so can this.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
Having kids is weird. And selfish.
Why would you choose to create a human being who is going to suffer hardship, pain, distress, anxiety, and sadness, knowing from the moment of consciousness that they, and everyone they know and love, will die.
Why would you do that.
Would you prefer to have not been born? I'm glad I'm here, personally, and my children seem ok with it, too.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
I get the cab-rank rule, but you don't have to remain Shadow Attorney General while doing these things...
Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Attorney General is acting for the Russian arm of a logistics giant closely involved in one of Vladimir Putin’s pet projects.
One Essex Court’s Lord Wolfson KC, who was appointed shadow Attorney General by the new Tory Party leader in November, is instructed to defend DP World Russia FZCO in the $14bn Ziyavudin Magomedov litigation before London’s Commercial Court. The case was thrown out by Mr Justice Bright this month, largely for jurisdictional reasons, but is being appealed by Magomedov and his solicitors, Seladore Legal.
As a barrister, Lord Wolfson is constrained by the Cab Rank Rule which, according to The Bar Council, “means that barristers cannot discriminate between clients, and that they must take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated ,,. DP World Russia is working closely with Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom to help develop Russia’s “Northern Sea Route,” a project keenly supported by the Kremlin. The route has become increasingly important since the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin calling it “one of the obvious strategic priorities.” The initiative is part of the Kremlin’s plans to shift trade eastwards, running from Murmansk near Norway to the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska.” ... The House of Lords’ Code of Conduct states that “in the performance of their parliamentary duties, members of the House shall base their actions on consideration of the public interest, and shall resolve any conflict between their personal interest and the public interest at once, and in favour of the public interest.”
...you could also cite conflict of interest as, presumably, the Tory Party still supports sanctions on Russia. Anyway, fair game, if Starmer's work at the bar can be raised, so can this.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I believe Dura is more of a Morgan man, actually, and don't you dare say a word against them.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
Fortunately almost all battery storage projects now don't involve heavy metal chemistries. And are far less prone to such incidents.
If US compensation lawyers get involved, the potential bill for contamination could be quite substantial.
Shorting seems like a dangerous thing to be doing.
There’s internet rumours today that people related to the weekend’s Chinese AI thingy have been shorting NVidia, and they all made bank yesterday. Which could of course be a false flag from those who don’t want to believe that the Chinese have just done a Sputnik on the Americans.
Between that and Trump now putting tariffs on TSMC it wouldn't be a surprise that there were some people shorting them in advance.
Looks like an overreaction to me - maybe not with OpenAI, but surely the result will just be doing more with the same kit rather than the same with less?
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
Having kids is weird. And selfish.
Why would you choose to create a human being who is going to suffer hardship, pain, distress, anxiety, and sadness, knowing from the moment of consciousness that they, and everyone they know and love, will die.
Why would you do that.
Would you prefer to have not been born? I'm glad I'm here, personally, and my children seem ok with it, too.
Because you don't think about it. If you did would you inflict that experience on someone (your child) you no doubt profess to love more than anything.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
I think the opposite will happen in the sense that people are going to finally get fed up with using technology all the time, staring at a screen for a large part of the day.
Yes, maybe so. A computer screen is so tiny compared to everything else around you. It's odd to focus such a large chunk of your attention on it.
Screens are on the way out
Soon we will all have spectacles (or even contact lenses) on which a screen will be projected - but translucent (if you want) - you will open your eyes and all this info will be hovering in front of you
Thereby freeing up your hands and ending the absurd stoop of early 21st century humans, hunched over smartphones
This tech exists now and is getting better, it is not some sci fi dream. PB can thank me later for keeping everyone abreast
How is PB's resident expert on AI this morning after his investments got hammered yesterday ?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Lewis McKenzie @LewisMcKenzie94 NEW: Waste management firm Biffa has been given the go-ahead by a judge to proceed with suing the Scottish Government for around £160m over their botched deposit return scheme.
It's all Westminsters fault according to the hapless Lorna Slater.
It’s all Lorna Slater’s fault according to the hapless Fairliered. If the Scottish Government lose the case, would I be able to bring a private prosecution against Lorna Slater for my share of the unnecessary costs she, and her colleagues, have cost Scots?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
I think the opposite will happen in the sense that people are going to finally get fed up with using technology all the time, staring at a screen for a large part of the day.
Yes, maybe so. A computer screen is so tiny compared to everything else around you. It's odd to focus such a large chunk of your attention on it.
Screens are on the way out
Soon we will all have spectacles (or even contact lenses) on which a screen will be projected - but translucent (if you want) - you will open your eyes and all this info will be hovering in front of you
Thereby freeing up your hands and ending the absurd stoop of early 21st century humans, hunched over smartphones
This tech exists now and is getting better, it is not some sci fi dream. PB can thank me later for keeping everyone abreast
How is PB's resident expert on AI this morning after his investments got hammered yesterday ?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Still thinking "ITS A ONE WAY BET"
VR goggles you wear nonstop have been The Next Big Thing for decades. Aside from technology holdups, read Snowcrash to see why they haven’t hit yet. Ref : Gargoyles.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
I think the opposite will happen in the sense that people are going to finally get fed up with using technology all the time, staring at a screen for a large part of the day.
Yes, maybe so. A computer screen is so tiny compared to everything else around you. It's odd to focus such a large chunk of your attention on it.
Screens are on the way out
Soon we will all have spectacles (or even contact lenses) on which a screen will be projected - but translucent (if you want) - you will open your eyes and all this info will be hovering in front of you
Thereby freeing up your hands and ending the absurd stoop of early 21st century humans, hunched over smartphones
This tech exists now and is getting better, it is not some sci fi dream. PB can thank me later for keeping everyone abreast
How is PB's resident expert on AI this morning after his investments got hammered yesterday ?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Still thinking "ITS A ONE WAY BET"
i confess I did wake this morning with a mild shudder n Rangoon, and i did look at my Hargreaves Lansdown app with trepidation. But actually it was fine
Took about a 1.3% hit. My investments are quite wide and mixed
1.3%? Meh
I strongly suspect the market will bounce back, possibly even stronger as the race heats up
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
Of course it's their fault. Their product line up is MaxPower versions of out-of-production JLR cars that weren't very good to start with and million quid kit cars. That's not a sustainable business model in the 2025 automotive industry no matter what the government does or doesn't do. See Ruf for an example of how to do that low production run modification business correctly. Even I'd have a Ruf RGT-8 and I am notoriously snobby about cars.
Fortunately almost all battery storage projects now don't involve heavy metal chemistries. And are far less prone to such incidents.
If US compensation lawyers get involved, the potential bill for contamination could be quite substantial.
Shorting seems like a dangerous thing to be doing.
There’s internet rumours today that people related to the weekend’s Chinese AI thingy have been shorting NVidia, and they all made bank yesterday. Which could of course be a false flag from those who don’t want to believe that the Chinese have just done a Sputnik on the Americans.
Between that and Trump now putting tariffs on TSMC it wouldn't be a surprise that there were some people shorting them in advance.
Looks like an overreaction to me - maybe not with OpenAI, but surely the result will just be doing more with the same kit rather than the same with less?
That's unpredictable, and NVidia was priced for perfection.
The implication is that there's a lot of room for less well funded competition in AI, which won't be able to afford the nosebleed prices of the newest NVidia products.
So the incentive for outspending the competition on hardware has diminished.
There's also the nagging question of what emerges next from China. Restricting their access to advanced chips seems to have spurred some significant innovation - and below the level of the large state corporations, there's a lot of market competition in China to spur that.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
I think the opposite will happen in the sense that people are going to finally get fed up with using technology all the time, staring at a screen for a large part of the day.
Yes, maybe so. A computer screen is so tiny compared to everything else around you. It's odd to focus such a large chunk of your attention on it.
Screens are on the way out
Soon we will all have spectacles (or even contact lenses) on which a screen will be projected - but translucent (if you want) - you will open your eyes and all this info will be hovering in front of you
Thereby freeing up your hands and ending the absurd stoop of early 21st century humans, hunched over smartphones
This tech exists now and is getting better, it is not some sci fi dream. PB can thank me later for keeping everyone abreast
How is PB's resident expert on AI this morning after his investments got hammered yesterday ?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Still thinking "ITS A ONE WAY BET"
VR goggles you wear nonstop have been The Next Big Thing for decades. Aside from technology holdups, read Snowcrash to see why they haven’t hit yet. Ref : Gargoyles.
it’s not VR it’s a screen in your glasses
And you can already buy versions, they are roughly where smartwatches were 5 years ago?
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I believe Dura is more of a Morgan man, actually, and don't you dare say a word against them.
I think I've got that right.
Nothing wrong with a Morgan. They have as much right to exist as the next niche British motor company. I certainly wouldn't celebrate their demise (especially if profitable), just because their government made a sudden change in direction, with no discussion, that ended up stopping future investment and jobs, that had already been planned.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I'm only 64.
Lazy sod, get back to work and be a part of the economy. Retirees who are fit and healthy are no better than benefits scroungers.
The abolition is only proposed for pensioners who reached State Pension Age since 2019. ie 6,600 from 18,000. The elderly ones keep the entitlement. Note that it is a bit complex I think.
For those, it is a shift to a double lock, taking out the earnings link.
IOM Full State Pension is £241 per week. UK Full State Pension is £221 per week. IOM State Pensioners: 21% of population. UK State Pensioners: 19% of population.
So the wider UK is somewhat less pressured.
Personally I'd support the change to a Double Lock here in return for a pension adjustment to the £241 per week, which is most of the way to where it needs to be.
On topic, the choreography of the first 3 months after the election was dire. OK, Labour may not have been about to set the world alight with transformational policy, but they could have eased into things and still had a fairly punitive budget without totally trashing both the CoE's reputation and business confidence in one speech.
Here's my alternative timeline:
- No doom and gloom speech in July. Instead a flurry of "growth" announcements, largely supply side along the lines they are now doing - Let the usual budget speculation mount up in the weeks before November, but leave out the newly discovered black hole. Simply say some difficult choices are coming to fix the mess of the last regime - The actual budget avoids policies that raise little but annoy a lot of people, including BPR and APR (or do them differently), and doesn't do something stupid like lowering the threshold for NI when that precisely targets low paid work. There were several other ways of using employers' NI that would have raised similar but been less problematic
That's just a handful of tweaks, and a very different vibe as a result.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
Of course it's their fault. Their product line up is MaxPower versions of out-of-production JLR cars that weren't very good to start with and million quid kit cars. That's not a sustainable business model in the 2025 automotive industry no matter what the government does or doesn't do. See Ruf for an example of how to do that low production run modification business correctly. Even I'd have a Ruf RGT-8 and I am notoriously snobby about cars.
Is the new Ruf SCR not their own homologation in Germany? Which is nuts when you think about what’s required for that.
We should celebrate all the low-volume car manufacturers, if only so that the next generation can have the opportunity to enjoy what we have all enjoyed.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
The Protestant Reformation would have happened in England even without Henry VIII, and even if the State had tried to resist it, IMHO.
Unless England was willing to adopt brutal counter-reformation methods, including burnings at the stake and massacres, it was spreading in London and the South-East, just as it was - and did - eventually in Scotland and Wales, where it took a more Calvinist/puritan form.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Oh, wait, sorry, I forgot. The latest line-to-take is "oh it doesn't matter where it came from, yes OK it was probably the lab, I said that all along even tho I was wanking on about pangolins for three-and-a-half years, and even tho I tried to get you sacked for mentioning the lab, anyway it's all history, no one cares, it's only twenty million dead, let's focus on the subpostmaster scandal. that's the big one"
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
I think the opposite will happen in the sense that people are going to finally get fed up with using technology all the time, staring at a screen for a large part of the day.
Yes, maybe so. A computer screen is so tiny compared to everything else around you. It's odd to focus such a large chunk of your attention on it.
Screens are on the way out
Soon we will all have spectacles (or even contact lenses) on which a screen will be projected - but translucent (if you want) - you will open your eyes and all this info will be hovering in front of you
Thereby freeing up your hands and ending the absurd stoop of early 21st century humans, hunched over smartphones
This tech exists now and is getting better, it is not some sci fi dream. PB can thank me later for keeping everyone abreast
How is PB's resident expert on AI this morning after his investments got hammered yesterday ?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Still thinking "ITS A ONE WAY BET"
i confess I did wake this morning with a mild shudder n Rangoon, and i did look at my Hargreaves Lansdown app with trepidation. But actually it was fine
Took about a 1.3% hit. My investments are quite wide and mixed
1.3%? Meh
I strongly suspect the market will bounce back, possibly even stronger as the race heats up
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
Or the opposite, because they can't be arsed and think other people's kids and their taxes should pay for them in their old age.
Fundamentally, having children is the most human thing you can do.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
Interesting one. Naturally marketeers will appeal to the predispositions and prejudices of their potential customer base. But when do they go too far?
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
I think there is a case for ultra low volume producers being exempted and with no end date.
There’s a great British cottage industry, related to the motorsport industry, that makes tiny volumes of some really cool cars, most of which will drive hundreds of miles a year at best on the roads.
They employ collectively thousands of people, and a fair amount of their production is exported.
If you’re Rachel from accounts, take a good look at the tens of millions in positive balances to the Exchequer that these companies produce every year.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
No need for any concerns about Assisted Dying latest. Our Committee are giving it their full attention.
Madeline Grant@Madz_Grant In "watertight consultation process" latest, Jake Richards MP who is meant to be giving his full attention to a series of medical professionals talking about assisted suicide, is in fact spending his time on X slagging off the Shadow Attorney General and retweeting things.
Quote Jake Richards MP @JakeBenRichards · 3h Replying to @JakeBenRichards David is part of Robert’s team, as a fellow member of the Shadow Cabinet - but of course there is an important link between the role of Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. Their contrasting approaches to this issue should be noted. 11:20 am · 28 Jan 2025 · 28.6K Views
I've seen KamiKwasi, Richi Rich and Rachel from Accounts as moniker's for Chancellors. I'm not sure any are particularly flattering, but they are designed to poke the bruise of their biggest political weakness with an essential truth.
Box Office Phil always surprised me. Presumably that was ironic.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
It's certainly not ideal for the selfish.
Its not about being selfish. Life is just better when you've had a decent sleep. Sunday night our son was unaccountably awake in the middle of the night and wouldn't sleep anywhere other than our bed. Poor night of broken sleep. Parents grumpy. Shit journey into work (roadworks added to roadworks so 30 minute trip is now 90.)
Last night - unbroken sleep, worse journey to work but didn't feel anything like as grumpy.
Love him to bits but not so much at 2 am.
As I said, it's not for the selfish, since many just won't handle the pain.
(My first didn't sleep through the night for well over two years.)
What is having kids but an act of selfishness? You do it to perpetuate your genes. The selfish gene
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
R AI CHEL FROM ACCOUNTS. (I think I got away with it.)
Can somebody please explain why some twat of a Labour MP said that calling her that was sexist ffs?
Neither Labour nor an MP.
We have had some seriously shit Chancellors, and others who attracted party political approbrium for doing things the other side didn't like.
Nobody has even been dubbed x from Accounts before. Kwazi from Accounts? George? Gordon? Nor would they have been - they are Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Perhaps its a complete coincidence that Tory types have decided to pile in with the belittling in a so far unique way to the first woman in the role.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Appended to the article in question:
Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
I think the opposite will happen in the sense that people are going to finally get fed up with using technology all the time, staring at a screen for a large part of the day.
Yes, maybe so. A computer screen is so tiny compared to everything else around you. It's odd to focus such a large chunk of your attention on it.
Screens are on the way out
Soon we will all have spectacles (or even contact lenses) on which a screen will be projected - but translucent (if you want) - you will open your eyes and all this info will be hovering in front of you
Thereby freeing up your hands and ending the absurd stoop of early 21st century humans, hunched over smartphones
This tech exists now and is getting better, it is not some sci fi dream. PB can thank me later for keeping everyone abreast
How is PB's resident expert on AI this morning after his investments got hammered yesterday ?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Still thinking "ITS A ONE WAY BET"
VR goggles you wear nonstop have been The Next Big Thing for decades. Aside from technology holdups, read Snowcrash to see why they haven’t hit yet. Ref : Gargoyles.
it’s not VR it’s a screen in your glasses
And you can already buy versions, they are roughly where smartwatches were 5 years ago?
R AI CHEL FROM ACCOUNTS. (I think I got away with it.)
Can somebody please explain why some twat of a Labour MP said that calling her that was sexist ffs?
Neither Labour nor an MP.
We have had some seriously shit Chancellors, and others who attracted party political approbrium for doing things the other side didn't like.
Nobody has even been dubbed x from Accounts before. Kwazi from Accounts? George? Gordon? Nor would they have been - they are Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Perhaps its a complete coincidence that Tory types have decided to pile in with the belittling in a so far unique way to the first woman in the role.
I'm sure some Labour types decided to pile in with the belittling in a unique way to the UK's first woman Prime Minister.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Appended to the article in question:
Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
March 2020, when lab leak was officially prohibited as a “racist conspiracy theory”
I've seen KamiKwasi, Richi Rich and Rachel from Accounts as moniker's for Chancellors. I'm not sure any are particularly flattering, but they are designed to poke the bruise of their biggest political weakness with an essential truth.
Box Office Phil always surprised me. Presumably that was ironic.
Ironically Box Office Phil turned out to be a far better chancellor than most of his successors. Boring isn't a bad thing when the alternative is chaos...
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I'm only 64.
Perhaps the Beatles could write you a really cheesy song in celebration.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
Of course it's their fault. Their product line up is MaxPower versions of out-of-production JLR cars that weren't very good to start with and million quid kit cars. That's not a sustainable business model in the 2025 automotive industry no matter what the government does or doesn't do. See Ruf for an example of how to do that low production run modification business correctly. Even I'd have a Ruf RGT-8 and I am notoriously snobby about cars.
Is the new Ruf SCR not their own homologation in Germany? Which is nuts when you think about what’s required for that.
We should celebrate all the low-volume car manufacturers, if only so that the next generation can have the opportunity to enjoy what we have all enjoyed.
The under-capitalised, low volume manufacturing of shoddy sports cars has been a leitmotif of the British car industry since the dawn of time when Bernie Ecclestone's prostate wasn't the size of a satsuma. I see little to celebrate. Caterham, maybe, for the sheer commercial acumen involved in wringing every last quid out of the 7 platform for decades on end.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I'm only 64.
Lazy sod, get back to work and be a part of the economy. Retirees who are fit and healthy are no better than benefits scroungers.
I'm too old for that now, Nigel. Age has come as a surprise to me but has come nonetheless. You think you'll always be 63, then one day you wake up and you're 64.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Appended to the article in question:
Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
March 2020, when lab leak was officially prohibited as a “racist conspiracy theory”
This isn’t quite the correction you think
The point is that people were already claiming that this article proved a lab leak 5 years ago. It's nothing new.
I welcome Rachel Reeves' and Starmer's move to widen the breadth of investments that pension funds can make. The intentional coralling of pension funds into certain types of investments played a big role in the LDI crisis.
The only issue I have with this policy is that at the same time as making it easier for pension funds to invest, the economic environment created by Starmer and Reeves is not conducive to that investment - businesses are shrinking not growing. This approach should really be teamed with moves to ease the tax burden on businesses, get energy prices down, and ease planning (this one appears to be happening). Or presumably they will simply invest elsewhere.
I think this is a positive overall, and it's easy to overlook it because the overall approach has been so shambolical.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I'm only 64.
Perhaps the Beatles could write you a really cheesy song in celebration.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
You obviously had better weather than we did. I think all the conversations at the sideline last Sunday were on the topic of how terrible it was standing in freezing driving rain, how cold we were, whether anyone could feel their feet, and if the ref could end the game early as we were 5-0 up and the other team had stopped trying.
That rings true for me. Thank God those days are over. I'd almost managed to blot out the memories of endless hours stood in the freezing cold and pouring rain next to some godforsaken field on the edge of a disused industrial estate. That's if you were lucky. If unlucky, you'd be running the line having accidentally accepted the flag without thinking or having been finally shamed into the job. Then you'd be spending the next hour and a half also trying desperately to judge offsides and penalties on a pitch with barely discernable markings. Those of you with just daughters - consider yourselves blessed.
I thought if you have kids then that is one of the joys of having them.
Plus are you suggesting peoples' daughters are at home playing with their dolls
It's one of the joys of having them IN RETROSPECT
When I was a parent to a young child, my experience was always: I hate parenting, I love *having parented*
Yes it can be a challenge for narcissists.
Though there is a serious point in there somewhere.
The expectation that every single second of parenthood is a triumphal, joyous, life affirming moment, complete with background music, puts enormous pressure on parents.
It’s been linked to depression and feelings of failure. Even suicides.
Note to parents - it’s all right to feel that waking up 4 times a night to change nappies is a shit job. Because it is.
Yes, it's total bollocks
Having a baby is like Brexiting. It won't all be good. Some of it will be really bad, boring and painful, and it will restrict your life for many years. But on the whole most people don't regret it, and in retrospect you will remember and cherish the joys
I assume for those north of Gretna the metaphor alters to being stuck in a Lebensborn programme against our will, impregnated by some hulking brute in black and told it was for our own good and the future greatness of the nation.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Why do we think that Biden pardoned Facui from 2014?
Quite so. They know, and they've known all along, and they lied to us, quite blatantly. They lied to the world
Sadly it increasingly looks like there was something organised between Washington and Wuhan, and it all went horribly wrong.
I can actually now envisage a Supreme Court challenge to the Fauci pardon, on the basis that he was never investigated for anything and/or that the President was not compus mentis, with the disclosure requirement being utterly damning on the previous administration.
R AI CHEL FROM ACCOUNTS. (I think I got away with it.)
Can somebody please explain why some twat of a Labour MP said that calling her that was sexist ffs?
Because it's effective and they want to close down that attack line.
It's not much of an attack line. "Reeves is shit" tells your story more succinctly than referring to her as "Rachel from accounts".
That is subtly the implication of Rachel from Accounts: that she's overpromoted and not up to the job, and therefore crap.
Attack lines need to be humorous as well as wounding. You can't just litter in the four letter words for them, although that was effectively the case with George Osborne.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Appended to the article in question:
Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
March 2020, when lab leak was officially prohibited as a “racist conspiracy theory”
This isn’t quite the correction you think
The point is that people were already claiming that this article proved a lab leak 5 years ago. It's nothing new.
it’s new to me, and, it seem, new to many people here (and on TwiX)
I am constantly surprised by the weight of the evidence that piles up for Lab Leak
I mean, WTF, they KNEW it was horribly risky back in 2015??
R AI CHEL FROM ACCOUNTS. (I think I got away with it.)
Can somebody please explain why some twat of a Labour MP said that calling her that was sexist ffs?
Neither Labour nor an MP.
We have had some seriously shit Chancellors, and others who attracted party political approbrium for doing things the other side didn't like.
Nobody has even been dubbed x from Accounts before. Kwazi from Accounts? George? Gordon? Nor would they have been - they are Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Perhaps its a complete coincidence that Tory types have decided to pile in with the belittling in a so far unique way to the first woman in the role.
I think plenty of Tories have piled in on Truss and May in many ways - so women on ostensibly their own side.
If Gordon Brown hadn’t been so well spun as some economic genius and people had realised more widely his expertise was actually in Labour Party History I’m sure some mocking name would have been found.
George Osborne was referred to mockingly as Gideon, a name he purposefully rejected, because it fed the effete posh and rarified attack line on him.
Brown was referred to as the great clunking fist which is only flattering if you want to be seen as a dull blunt object.
Sunak was mocked for his height - possibly worse than the “from accounts line” and his wealth and how we was going to split to California asap (how’d that going?) so wasn’t really British.
Rachel could nail the “from accounts” attack line in an instant by showing her actual job descriptions and us Tories could be suitably chastened.
If it had been a Labour male chancellor with the slightly murky credentials they would also be called “x from accounts” to mock their experience or lack of.
Accounts isn’t a particularly female roll in stereotypical or negative way anyway.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Appended to the article in question:
Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
March 2020, when lab leak was officially prohibited as a “racist conspiracy theory”
This isn’t quite the correction you think
Yet being tagged as a racist conspiracy theory is the only reason you got interested in it, in the first place.
Had Philip and Mary reigned another ten years, and produced an heir, England would have become the third Hapsburg Realm in Europe. I suspect Philip would have divided his possessions, the same way his father did, and his English heir would have received the Burgundian inheritance.
IMHO, Protestantism would have been effectively suppressed, in that case.
The Protestant Reformation would have happened in England even without Henry VIII, and even if the State had tried to resist it, IMHO.
Unless England was willing to adopt brutal counter-reformation methods, including burnings at the stake and massacres, it was spreading in London and the South-East, just as it was - and did - eventually in Scotland and Wales, where it took a more Calvinist/puritan form.
Jack Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh and Eammon Duffy etc etc etc would beg to differ.
The Prayer Book Rebellion and the Pilgrimage of Grace were significant and popular revolts against the Reformation in western and northern England. It took a lot of brutality in many parts of England to enforce the new church - martial law in the northern counties after the Pilgrimage of Grace.
The idea that the Reformation was welcomed with open arms in Wales is also something of a myth - from 1549, all worship in Wales was to be in English, but most people in Wales only spoke Welsh. If William Morgan hadn't translated the Bible into Welsh as late as 1588 it would not have taken root.
Scotland's reformation was a think of itself, as shown by the differing national churches that emerged there and in England.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Why do we think that Biden pardoned Facui from 2014?
Quite so. They know, and they've known all along, and they lied to us, quite blatantly. They lied to the world
Sadly it increasingly looks like there was something organised between Washington and Wuhan, and it all went horribly wrong.
I can actually now envisage a Supreme Court challenge to the Fauci pardon, on the basis that he was never investigated for anything and/or that the President was not compus mentis, with the disclosure requirement being utterly damning on the previous administration.
Yes, they have toi challenge the Fauci pardon. Even if it is invulnerable he has to be held to account in some way, meanwhile they need to be dragging Collins, Farrar, Daszak et al into the courtrooms
Also: the relevant editors of Nature and The Lancet. Entirely corrupt
I welcome Rachel Reeves' and Starmer's move to widen the breadth of investments that pension funds can make. The intentional coralling of pension funds into certain types of investments played a big role in the LDI crisis.
The only issue I have with this policy is that at the same time as making it easier for pension funds to invest, the economic environment created by Starmer and Reeves is not conducive to that investment - businesses are shrinking not growing. This approach should really be teamed with moves to ease the tax burden on businesses, get energy prices down, and ease planning (this one appears to be happening). Or presumably they will simply invest elsewhere.
I think this is a positive overall, and it's easy to overlook it because the overall approach has been so shambolical.
That's not what she is doing though. What she is doing is making it easier for employers whose pension is currently in surplus to withdraw that surplus so that they have capital to invest (or spend on dividends). That's my problem with the proposal.
I would welcome giving pension funds more freedom to invest in small companies and start ups but there is a question of scale. If you have £1000 to invest and that is trebled by a successful investment in a small company that is a success. If you have £10bn to invest its not even a rounding error. What will happen is that we will get more funds that specialise in small cap investment and pension funds will invest in them to spread the risks. That would be a good thing but it is silly to pretend that it is creating more investment when that money is already invested.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
Of course it's their fault. Their product line up is MaxPower versions of out-of-production JLR cars that weren't very good to start with and million quid kit cars. That's not a sustainable business model in the 2025 automotive industry no matter what the government does or doesn't do. See Ruf for an example of how to do that low production run modification business correctly. Even I'd have a Ruf RGT-8 and I am notoriously snobby about cars.
Is the new Ruf SCR not their own homologation in Germany? Which is nuts when you think about what’s required for that.
We should celebrate all the low-volume car manufacturers, if only so that the next generation can have the opportunity to enjoy what we have all enjoyed.
The under-capitalised, low volume manufacturing of shoddy sports cars has been a leitmotif of the British car industry since the dawn of time when Bernie Ecclestone's prostate wasn't the size of a satsuma. I see little to celebrate. Caterham, maybe, for the sheer commercial acumen involved in wringing every last quid out of the 7 platform for decades on end.
Surely you can celebrate the jobs, and not wanting to regulate whole industries of small businesses out of existence?
There’s also a lot of crossover on both sides with the motorsport industry, which is undoubtedly a massive British success story.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Why do we think that Biden pardoned Facui from 2014?
Quite so. They know, and they've known all along, and they lied to us, quite blatantly. They lied to the world
Sadly it increasingly looks like there was something organised between Washington and Wuhan, and it all went horribly wrong.
I can actually now envisage a Supreme Court challenge to the Fauci pardon, on the basis that he was never investigated for anything and/or that the President was not compus mentis, with the disclosure requirement being utterly damning on the previous administration.
Yes, they have toi challenge the Fauci pardon. Even if it is invulnerable he has to be held to account in some way, meanwhile they need to be dragging Collins, Farrar, Daszak et al into the courtrooms
Also: the relevant editors of Nature and The Lancet. Entirely corrupt
They’ll not be challenging presidential pardons. Trump needs his.
Had Philip and Mary reigned another ten years, and produced an heir, England would have become the third Hapsburg Realm in Europe. I suspect Philip would have divided his possessions, the same way his father did, and his English heir would have received the Burgundian inheritance.
IMHO, Protestantism would have been effectively suppressed, in that case.
Interesting, I'm not so sure - the political and economic situation was different in England, and I don't think that would have been sustainable.
We would probably have had a "Dutch Revolt" type rebellion against it. There was great resistance to interference of a foreign power in English affairs.
On religion, I think Mary just took the throne too late, and too many horses had bolted. Her burnings had already exacerbated anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feelings significantly by the time of her death.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
The Protestant Reformation would have happened in England even without Henry VIII, and even if the State had tried to resist it, IMHO.
Unless England was willing to adopt brutal counter-reformation methods, including burnings at the stake and massacres, it was spreading in London and the South-East, just as it was - and did - eventually in Scotland and Wales, where it took a more Calvinist/puritan form.
Jack Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh and Eammon Duffy etc etc etc would beg to differ.
The Prayer Book Rebellion and the Pilgrimage of Grace were significant and popular revolts against the Reformation in western and northern England. It took a lot of brutality in many parts of England to enforce the new church - martial law in the northern counties after the Pilgrimage of Grace.
The idea that the Reformation was welcomed with open arms in Wales is also something of a myth - from 1549, all worship in Wales was to be in English, but most people in Wales only spoke Welsh. If William Morgan hadn't translated the Bible into Welsh as late as 1588 it would not have taken root.
Scotland's reformation was a think of itself, as shown by the differing national churches that emerged there and in England.
My guess is the West and the North would have stayed Catholic, but London and the South-East would have seen the spread of Protestantism.
Wales ended up with a non-conformist tradition, which grew from the bottom-up notwithstanding the Church of Wales.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
Why do we think that Biden pardoned Facui from 2014?
Quite so. They know, and they've known all along, and they lied to us, quite blatantly. They lied to the world
Sadly it increasingly looks like there was something organised between Washington and Wuhan, and it all went horribly wrong.
I can actually now envisage a Supreme Court challenge to the Fauci pardon, on the basis that he was never investigated for anything and/or that the President was not compus mentis, with the disclosure requirement being utterly damning on the previous administration.
Yes, they have toi challenge the Fauci pardon. Even if it is invulnerable he has to be held to account in some way, meanwhile they need to be dragging Collins, Farrar, Daszak et al into the courtrooms
Also: the relevant editors of Nature and The Lancet. Entirely corrupt
One comment I’ve heard, is that someone in receipt of a pardon is no longer subject to the 5th Amendment. You can’t incriminate yourself if you’re exempt from being prosecuted.
So Fauci could conceivably be compelled to testify under oath in front of a House or Senate Committee, and can be compelled to answer specific questions with inference able to be drawn from evasive answers.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
Thanks to this government, Britain's oldest racing car manufacturer (a British, profitable, well run business, with pipeline investment) has had to put all their new vehicle plans on hold, costing jobs there and throughout the chain in the UK, along with the government losing the taxes the investment would have provided.
Suspect all other niche motor companies, that we thrive with, will be thinking the same
Why don't you tell them to stop moaning from the comfort of your retirement chair? Real life impacts, clearly not open for business.
I'll let you get back to your life and soul of tea and dunking biscuits and bad takes.
Lawrence Whittaker @ListerLawrence A statement from the Lister Motor Company.
What a load of fucking shit. To the limited extent that Lister produce anything, it's anachronistic junk. Hasten them to their well-deserved oblivion.
That's lovely. Our local anarchist joins forces with old retired chap to cheer on the demise of a profitable British company and potential jobs, through no fault of their own, because they don't like their products. Fucktards.
I'm only 64.
Perhaps the Beatles could write you a really cheesy song in celebration.
Comments
Schemes with a demographically limited group of beneficiaries need to manage themselves to meet their obligations, and to last until the last beneficiary pops their clogs - including legal obligations for widows and inheritances and so on.
That is different to some scheme, eg Local Authority schemes, which will essentially go on forever.
A hybrid is miners' schemes, where the industry is nearly completely gone and the mass membership are dying off. They have just had at least one scheme rebalanced so that future unnecessary assets are paid out sooner, which is fair.
Schemes from the Local Authority category should be fine to invest in illiquid assets for a part of their asset pool, since they are long term investors. Schemes with a fixed, dying-off set of beneficiaries need to be more nimble over a period of say 25 years.
The Church Commissioners and University Endowments may be an interesting comparator - both being really long term investors.
Lewis McKenzie
@LewisMcKenzie94
NEW: Waste management firm Biffa has been given the go-ahead by a judge to proceed with suing the Scottish Government for around £160m over their botched deposit return scheme.
The Moss Landing fire was another involving their (old) batteries.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/moss-landing-fire-reveals-flaws-in-the-battery-industrys-early-designs
Fortunately almost all battery storage projects now don't involve heavy metal chemistries. And are far less prone to such incidents.
If US compensation lawyers get involved, the potential bill for contamination could be quite substantial.
Is it a change in the philosophy of mental health professionals, that now leans towards calling people bad rather than mad?
Or is it a change in the legal environment, that now sees whole-life (or close) sentences as routine, as opposed to people possibly getting out after 10 or 15 years for heinous offences?
This whole argument is ridiculous. Parents, of whatever stripe, are not selfless saints diligently sacrificing personal gain so as to provide the care workers of the next generation. They do it because that way their genes live on, because that’s what they selfishly desire
You could easily construct an argument that the willingly childless are actually the less selfish
https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/government-plans-end-of-triple-lock-for-manx-state-pension/
If only our govt had the spine to do it.
I agree with you on local authority schemes due to the demographics.
Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Attorney General is acting for the Russian arm of a logistics giant closely involved in one of Vladimir Putin’s pet projects.
One Essex Court’s Lord Wolfson KC, who was appointed shadow Attorney General by the new Tory Party leader in November, is instructed to defend DP World Russia FZCO in the $14bn Ziyavudin Magomedov litigation before London’s Commercial Court. The case was thrown out by Mr Justice Bright this month, largely for jurisdictional reasons, but is being appealed by Magomedov and his solicitors, Seladore Legal.
As a barrister, Lord Wolfson is constrained by the Cab Rank Rule which, according to The Bar Council, “means that barristers cannot discriminate between clients, and that they must take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated
,,.
DP World Russia is working closely with Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom to help develop Russia’s “Northern Sea Route,” a project keenly supported by the Kremlin. The route has become increasingly important since the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin calling it “one of the obvious strategic priorities.” The initiative is part of the Kremlin’s plans to shift trade eastwards, running from Murmansk near Norway to the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska.”
...
The House of Lords’ Code of Conduct states that “in the performance of their parliamentary duties, members of the House shall base their actions on consideration of the public interest, and shall resolve any conflict between their personal interest and the public interest at once, and in favour of the public interest.”
...you could also cite conflict of interest as, presumably, the Tory Party still supports sanctions on Russia. Anyway, fair game, if Starmer's work at the bar can be raised, so can this.
https://www.thelawyer.com/shadow-attorney-general-acting-for-kremlin-linked-business/
A number of prisoners who start out in prison get moved there in due course. IIRC Ian Brady and Peter Sutcliffe were among them. It would not amaze me if the Southport defendant will be another in time.
They employ collectively thousands of people, and a fair amount of their production is exported.
If you’re Rachel from accounts, take a good look at the tens of millions in positive balances to the Exchequer that these companies produce every year.
Why would you choose to create a human being who is going to suffer hardship, pain, distress, anxiety, and sadness, knowing from the moment of consciousness that they, and everyone they know and love, will die.
Why would you do that.
Anyway if today's youth are not up to it, then the Baby Boomers should step up to the mark and put 'baby' back into Baby Boomers. After all that generation has all the cash and, like Thatcher, don't need the sleep.
He was loaded too - as I'd imagine plenty of manx residents are.
But for those of that disposition, it's an obvious future target.
Looks like another Morgan type nostalgia thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lister_Motor_Company
The Shadow Attourney General should really recuse himself from one or the other role, while the trial continues.
I think I've got that right.
Looks like an overreaction to me - maybe not with OpenAI, but surely the result will just be doing more with the same kit rather than the same with less?
Still boasting about a 10 PERCENT return in 2024 (roughly 1/2 that of the World index).
Still thinking "ITS A ONE WAY BET"
Took about a 1.3% hit. My investments are quite wide and mixed
1.3%? Meh
I strongly suspect the market will bounce back, possibly even stronger as the race heats up
The implication is that there's a lot of room for less well funded competition in AI, which won't be able to afford the nosebleed prices of the newest NVidia products.
So the incentive for outspending the competition on hardware has diminished.
There's also the nagging question of what emerges next from China. Restricting their access to advanced chips seems to have spurred some significant innovation - and below the level of the large state corporations, there's a lot of market competition in China to spur that.
And you can already buy versions, they are roughly where smartwatches were 5 years ago?
https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses
That would be crass and stupid.
The abolition is only proposed for pensioners who reached State Pension Age since 2019. ie 6,600 from 18,000. The elderly ones keep the entitlement. Note that it is a bit complex I think.
For those, it is a shift to a double lock, taking out the earnings link.
IOM Full State Pension is £241 per week. UK Full State Pension is £221 per week.
IOM State Pensioners: 21% of population. UK State Pensioners: 19% of population.
So the wider UK is somewhat less pressured.
Personally I'd support the change to a Double Lock here in return for a pension adjustment to the £241 per week, which is most of the way to where it needs to be.
Here's my alternative timeline:
- No doom and gloom speech in July. Instead a flurry of "growth" announcements, largely supply side along the lines they are now doing
- Let the usual budget speculation mount up in the weeks before November, but leave out the newly discovered black hole. Simply say some difficult choices are coming to fix the mess of the last regime
- The actual budget avoids policies that raise little but annoy a lot of people, including BPR and APR (or do them differently), and doesn't do something stupid like lowering the threshold for NI when that precisely targets low paid work. There were several other ways of using employers' NI that would have raised similar but been less problematic
That's just a handful of tweaks, and a very different vibe as a result.
"At a November 2015 Royal Society/National Academies meeting on "Gain of Function and Options for Regulation" at Chicheley Hall, UK, the UNC-Wuhan coronavirus research project was singled out as the project most likely--of all projects in the world--to cause a pandemic."
https://x.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1741114882429223166
People really really really really need to go on trial for this. And facing severe penalties. Twenty MILLION people are dead
We should celebrate all the low-volume car manufacturers, if only so that the next generation can have the opportunity to enjoy what we have all enjoyed.
Unless England was willing to adopt brutal counter-reformation methods, including burnings at the stake and massacres, it was spreading in London and the South-East, just as it was - and did - eventually in Scotland and Wales, where it took a more Calvinist/puritan form.
Fundamentally, having children is the most human thing you can do.
There is more nuance in the paper than in the abstract. Link:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X19886321
Does anyone remember the exotic indolent beach lifestyle portrayed by Lilt Adverts 1 or 2 generations ago? "Totally Tropical Ta-aste".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBJmw6ke17c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ua_DslMag
Or the more recent Kia Ora adverts from I think the noughties:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LvLn9PWln8
This has inspired to me order a vintage Camp Coffee tin advertising sign to hang next to my coffee machine.
One place they certainly promote using colonial narratives is Shimla:
https://www.audleytravel.com/india/places-to-go/shimla
Madeline Grant@Madz_Grant
In "watertight consultation process" latest, Jake Richards MP who is meant to be giving his full attention to a series of medical professionals talking about assisted suicide, is in fact spending his time on X slagging off the Shadow Attorney General and retweeting things.
Quote
Jake Richards MP @JakeBenRichards
·
3h
Replying to @JakeBenRichards
David is part of Robert’s team, as a fellow member of the Shadow Cabinet - but of course there is an important link between the role of Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. Their contrasting approaches to this issue should be noted.
11:20 am · 28 Jan 2025
·
28.6K
Views
Box Office Phil always surprised me. Presumably that was ironic.
But there are workarounds in some areas….
https://apple.news/Ar9dfTQhERDKzIdW8GvENyw
We have had some seriously shit Chancellors, and others who attracted party political approbrium for doing things the other side didn't like.
Nobody has even been dubbed x from Accounts before. Kwazi from Accounts? George? Gordon? Nor would they have been - they are Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Perhaps its a complete coincidence that Tory types have decided to pile in with the belittling in a so far unique way to the first woman in the role.
Editors’ note, March 2020 We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
This isn’t quite the correction you think
The only issue I have with this policy is that at the same time as making it easier for pension funds to invest, the economic environment created by Starmer and Reeves is not conducive to that investment - businesses are shrinking not growing. This approach should really be teamed with moves to ease the tax burden on businesses, get energy prices down, and ease planning (this one appears to be happening). Or presumably they will simply invest elsewhere.
I think this is a positive overall, and it's easy to overlook it because the overall approach has been so shambolical.
I can actually now envisage a Supreme Court challenge to the Fauci pardon, on the basis that he was never investigated for anything and/or that the President was not compus mentis, with the disclosure requirement being utterly damning on the previous administration.
Attack lines need to be humorous as well as wounding. You can't just litter in the four letter words for them, although that was effectively the case with George Osborne.
I am constantly surprised by the weight of the evidence that piles up for Lab Leak
I mean, WTF, they KNEW it was horribly risky back in 2015??
If Gordon Brown hadn’t been so well spun as some economic genius and people had realised more widely his expertise was actually in Labour Party History I’m sure some mocking name would have been found.
George Osborne was referred to mockingly as Gideon, a name he purposefully rejected, because it fed the effete posh and rarified attack line on him.
Brown was referred to as the great clunking fist which is only flattering if you want to be seen as a dull blunt object.
Sunak was mocked for his height - possibly worse than the “from accounts line” and his wealth and how we was going to split to California asap (how’d that going?) so wasn’t really British.
Rachel could nail the “from accounts” attack line in an instant by showing her actual job descriptions and us Tories could be suitably chastened.
If it had been a Labour male chancellor with the slightly murky credentials they would also be called “x from accounts” to mock their experience or lack of.
Accounts isn’t a particularly female roll in stereotypical or negative way anyway.
Had Philip and Mary reigned another ten years, and produced an heir, England would have become the third Hapsburg Realm in Europe. I suspect Philip would have divided his possessions, the same way his father did, and his English heir would have received the Burgundian inheritance.
IMHO, Protestantism would have been effectively suppressed, in that case.
The Prayer Book Rebellion and the Pilgrimage of Grace were significant and popular revolts against the Reformation in western and northern England. It took a lot of brutality in many parts of England to enforce the new church - martial law in the northern counties after the Pilgrimage of Grace.
The idea that the Reformation was welcomed with open arms in Wales is also something of a myth - from 1549, all worship in Wales was to be in English, but most people in Wales only spoke Welsh. If William Morgan hadn't translated the Bible into Welsh as late as 1588 it would not have taken root.
Scotland's reformation was a think of itself, as shown by the differing national churches that emerged there and in England.
Also: the relevant editors of Nature and The Lancet. Entirely corrupt
I would welcome giving pension funds more freedom to invest in small companies and start ups but there is a question of scale. If you have £1000 to invest and that is trebled by a successful investment in a small company that is a success. If you have £10bn to invest its not even a rounding error. What will happen is that we will get more funds that specialise in small cap investment and pension funds will invest in them to spread the risks. That would be a good thing but it is silly to pretend that it is creating more investment when that money is already invested.
There’s also a lot of crossover on both sides with the motorsport industry, which is undoubtedly a massive British success story.
We would probably have had a "Dutch Revolt" type rebellion against it. There was great resistance to interference of a foreign power in English affairs.
On religion, I think Mary just took the throne too late, and too many horses had bolted. Her burnings had already exacerbated anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish feelings significantly by the time of her death.
I'm surprised Philip managed it.
Wales ended up with a non-conformist tradition, which grew from the bottom-up notwithstanding the Church of Wales.
So Fauci could conceivably be compelled to testify under oath in front of a House or Senate Committee, and can be compelled to answer specific questions with inference able to be drawn from evasive answers.
https://youtu.be/HCTunqv1Xt4?si=wRb9CUeIT9kOIOAH
You're welcome.