Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
It's absurd to compare Boris to Trump. It's equally absurd, however, to compare a hypothetical Corbyn PM to Trump.
Whatever his shortcomings, and they are voluminous, Corbyn actually has a profound belief in democracy, and respects the rule of (UK) law and our unwritten constitution.
Yes, I can recall some here who were suggesting that Boris would refuse to quit, mount an insurrection. At the very least, plot his return and make the country ungovernable or something.
He has vanished from public life more than Tony Blair did.
Corbyn would have used primary legislation on the basis that The Will Of The People demanded it. I could easily see him using it to overturn court judgements against a policy he held dear.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Canada and Mexico retaliated, so don't expect them to remain at 25% for long:
From the FT: "An administration official said each order contained “a retaliation clause . . . so that if any country chooses to retaliate in any way, the signal will be to take further action with respect to likely increased tariffs”."
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Comparing customs duties and VAT is one of those things MAGAs do, because they don’t understand (or pretend not to understand) how VAT works. It’s like comparing customs duties with excise duties. I assume you’ve picked up that trope on one of your treks through the MAGA savanna.
For everyone else:
1. customs duties are applied to imports but not to domestic production, so they inhibit trade. VAT is applied irrespective of the origin of goods.
2. Customs is an absolute cost to businesses and recorded in COGS in their P&L. VAT is a flow through and only a cost to the end buyer. Just like US state sales and use taxes.
Because US sales taxes are absolute costs with no input recovery they raise a not dissimilar amount to VAT at much lower headline rates.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
I very much doubt he cares what happens to the GOP after he's term limited out. They were never more than a vehicle of convenience for him.
It's absurd to compare Boris to Trump. It's equally absurd, however, to compare a hypothetical Corbyn PM to Trump.
Whatever his shortcomings, and they are voluminous, Corbyn actually has a profound belief in democracy, and respects the rule of (UK) law and our unwritten constitution.
Yes, I can recall some here who were suggesting that Boris would refuse to quit, mount an insurrection. At the very least, plot his return and make the country ungovernable or something.
He has vanished from public life more than Tony Blair did.
Corbyn would have used primary legislation on the basis that The Will Of The People demanded it. I could easily see him using it to overturn court judgements against a policy he held dear.
Isn’t that the whole point of primary legislation?
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
You throw autism as an explanation for what you perceive as failure around with gay abandon. If I was handing "flags" out, that post would be deserving of one. Your use of "normal" in the final paragraph is particularly offensive,
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Comparing customs duties and VAT is one of those things MAGAs do, because they don’t understand (or pretend not to understand) how VAT works. It’s like comparing customs duties with excise duties. I assume you’ve picked up that trope on one of your treks through the MAGA savanna.
For everyone else:
1. customs duties are applied to imports but not to domestic production, so they inhibit trade. VAT is applied irrespective of the origin of goods.
2. Customs is an absolute cost to businesses and recorded in COGS in their P&L. VAT is a flow through and only a cost to the end buyer. Just like US state sales and use taxes.
Because US sales taxes are absolute costs with no input recovery they raise a not dissimilar amount to VAT at much lower headline rates.
Though there’s also tips of course. I suppose to someone who regularly dines out in US restaurants 25% extra on top would seem like a steal.
One reason I found the coronation so 'unrelatable' was it didn't seem to reflect what really matters right now. We need a Head of State committed to defending Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law against a government that might seek to use the enormous power of the machine at its disposal to undermine those things.
Hypothesis: a fearty, vow breaking, Tory-lite Labour government is as damaging to the Union as a Johnson-led Tory one. Worse in a way as the ‘if only you vote for us progressives things will be better’ appeal is entirely gone.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of peaceful evolution and democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there. But insofar as they do, they glorify violence and revolution rather than peaceful evolution - one of the most famous political quotes there is Jefferson's moronic saying about how a little rebellion now and again is a good thing.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
'A responsive, economically literate government', or at least one-third of one was what we had in 2010-15. Unfortunately the other two-thirds stamped on it 2015 and we've been paying the price ever since.
The whole Trump might reconsider rejoining WHO thing is surely his whole weird approach based on playing hard ball in business deals.
When he announced withdrawal his big issue was that the US paid $500m and China paid something like $30m and that “wasn’t fair”.
I can see him rejoining if the WHO accept parity of payments with China and the US either increasing China’s bill or slashing the US bill.
Then Trump can tell the public that he got them a good deal. He made a great deal. The WHO needs him so much they accepted his amazing deal. And he screwed China.
Yup, Trump just wants a deal. The art of a deal.
Same with his trade tariffs, crazy as they are some financial commentators support them.
“The Art of the Deal” being, of course, a ghostwritten book that had very little to do with the real Trump. It’s his catchphrase, not some esoteric knowledge he possesses.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of peaceful evolution and democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there. But insofar as they do, they glorify violence and revolution rather than peaceful evolution - one of the most famous political quotes there is Jefferson's moronic saying about how a little rebellion now and again is a good thing.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
Systemic paralysis - when a decade to get a project started is seen as good going.
The old old pitch of the populates, since before Caesar, was “we will get shit done”.
It's absurd to compare Boris to Trump. It's equally absurd, however, to compare a hypothetical Corbyn PM to Trump.
Whatever his shortcomings, and they are voluminous, Corbyn actually has a profound belief in democracy, and respects the rule of (UK) law and our unwritten constitution.
Yes, I can recall some here who were suggesting that Boris would refuse to quit, mount an insurrection. At the very least, plot his return and make the country ungovernable or something.
He has vanished from public life more than Tony Blair did.
Corbyn would have used primary legislation on the basis that The Will Of The People demanded it. I could easily see him using it to overturn court judgements against a policy he held dear.
Isn’t that the whole point of primary legislation?
Yes, but it is very very rarely used in this way.
Consider the number of times the last government(s) were knocked back by the courts. They could easily turned up in the commons with a Bill overruling everything. But they didn't.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
With all due respect, go forth and multiply you horrid troll.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Both @Sandpit and myself have spoken out about the brilliant work the likes of the NTSB in the USA and RAIB/AAIB in the UK do.
However, I fear that this investigation stands a good chance of not getting to the facts of what happened - as the 'facts' have already been decided by people who should have remained quiet. And this is really bad.
Queuing to take off at Heathrow is the worst. Time just completely slows down. On @Leon's concept of noom (not the diet brand) I wonder whether he includes songs because this one does for me, I don't know why, somewhat unexplainable but definitely makes me miss my kids even though I'll see them again in a couple of days
I've wondered if Noom can be applied to art; obviously it is mostly relevant to architecture, but maybe painting, even music...
Certainly, English lacks words to describe spiritual states, perhaps because the British/English are a pragmatic, empirical people not given to religious passons, and when we do - the Reformation - it goes horribly wrong. Thus the language reflects its creators?
Consider all the many words for different kinds of snow, in Inuit; if we constantly experienced spiritual moments the way Greenlanders experience snow, we'd likely have a better lexicon to differentiate these raptures and miseries
One reason I found the coronation so 'unrelatable' was it didn't seem to reflect what really matters right now. We need a Head of State committed to defending Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law against a government that might seek to use the enormous power of the machine at its disposal to undermine those things.
Utterly loony. Parliamentary sovereignty is at its lowest ebb, and it has nothing to do with some hypothetical Prime Minister wanting to use its power, it has to do with the (largely Blairite) constitutional vandalism that has made our democracy virtually 'a constituional democracy' in the same way that the monarch's powers were gradually superceded away by parliament. We *need* someone to take that power back, or our vote (not to mention PB.com) is worthless.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
Cameron spent years working from hospital corridors etc because of his son, who he was fiercely protective of. That's not typical behaviour of a narcissist.
Dr David Owen published a good book on the phycology of leadership. He advanced the theory that eventually, everyone goes a bit loopy at the top. Too much of people praising the king.
Further, that because intense self belief is required to get to the top, this reinforces an existing issue. And that an added issue was *initial success* - "I am successful, the people love me, and I am surrounded by loyal supporters. I must be Great."
He suggested that the only one, in his time range, who got out OK was Major - who hated the job, by the end, so much, that it was a relief to leave.
The whole Trump might reconsider rejoining WHO thing is surely his whole weird approach based on playing hard ball in business deals.
When he announced withdrawal his big issue was that the US paid $500m and China paid something like $30m and that “wasn’t fair”.
I can see him rejoining if the WHO accept parity of payments with China and the US either increasing China’s bill or slashing the US bill.
Then Trump can tell the public that he got them a good deal. He made a great deal. The WHO needs him so much they accepted his amazing deal. And he screwed China.
Yup, Trump just wants a deal. The art of a deal.
Same with his trade tariffs, crazy as they are some financial commentators support them.
“The Art of the Deal” being, of course, a ghostwritten book that had very little to do with the real Trump. It’s his catchphrase, not some esoteric knowledge he possesses.
He’s certainly been involved in a lot of deals, but they’re largely property ones. And anyone who’s ever moved house knows it’s one of the most zero sum games of all. There’s no long term relationship with your buyer or seller. Even the landlord-tenant relationship is designed to be exploitative in one direction or the other.
Real estate is the main vestige of feudalism remaining in the economy.
Meanwhile, this spectacularly sunny Sunday, todays Rawnsley:
Anger about the chancellor’s new commitment to back the expansion of the London airport and others is mingled with bewilderment. A lot of Labour people are scratching their heads trying to work out why she wants to burn political capital on a hugely contentious project that couldn’t possibly be complete until long after she’s done at the Treasury and Sir Keir is gone from Number 10.
Hostile fire was instant, will be continuous for years ahead and comes from several camps with which Labour has wanted to be friendly. Labour MPs and ministers[‘] crystal balls are darkening with a dystopian vista of years of protest and resistance to Heathrow expansion in inquiry rooms, the law courts and parliament, and from antagonistic Londoners and environmental activists. Half of the cabinet – including Darren Jones, the number two at the Treasury, and Sir Keir himself – voted against a third runway the last time the idea was put to parliament.
There are fierce arguments about whether Heathrow expansion would make a meaningful contribution to growth anyway and wildly varying estimates about how much it would cost. Heathrow’s previous plans were priced at about £14bn when an estimate was produced in 2014. At least double that number, probably triple it. If investors can be found to stump up that kind of cash, they will want a return. This will mean higher landing charges, which will most likely be passed on to customers in increased ticket prices. The chancellor asserts, but can’t possibly be confident, that planes will be landing on a third runway by 2035. That sounds worryingly similar to the vainglorious delivery timetable once claimed during the sorry saga called HS2.
Turning the Oxford-Cambridge arc into “Europe’s Silicon Valley” is aiming high and has its own controversies, but at least that is an ambition with plausible claims to be good for growth. Betting on Heathrow expansion looks like an excursion into political Death Valley.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
I actually think that there is a gap in the market for - "This place needs fixing. I won't lie to you - the others will - it will take decades. This is the plan....."
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
With all due respect, go forth and multiply you horrid troll.
Why are we not allowed to label people as autistic, whereas everyone here feels absolutely happy to label Trump as a sociopath, narcissist and/or psychopath - see below - which could be deemed as deeply insulting to PB's happy community of sociopaths (@HYUFD), narcissists (me) and psychopaths (@Dura_Ace)?
Meanwhile, this spectacularly sunny Sunday, todays Rawnsley:
Anger about the chancellor’s new commitment to back the expansion of the London airport and others is mingled with bewilderment. A lot of Labour people are scratching their heads trying to work out why she wants to burn political capital on a hugely contentious project that couldn’t possibly be complete until long after she’s done at the Treasury and Sir Keir is gone from Number 10.
Hostile fire was instant, will be continuous for years ahead and comes from several camps with which Labour has wanted to be friendly. Labour MPs and ministers[‘] crystal balls are darkening with a dystopian vista of years of protest and resistance to Heathrow expansion in inquiry rooms, the law courts and parliament, and from antagonistic Londoners and environmental activists. Half of the cabinet – including Darren Jones, the number two at the Treasury, and Sir Keir himself – voted against a third runway the last time the idea was put to parliament.
There are fierce arguments about whether Heathrow expansion would make a meaningful contribution to growth anyway and wildly varying estimates about how much it would cost. Heathrow’s previous plans were priced at about £14bn when an estimate was produced in 2014. At least double that number, probably triple it. If investors can be found to stump up that kind of cash, they will want a return. This will mean higher landing charges, which will most likely be passed on to customers in increased ticket prices. The chancellor asserts, but can’t possibly be confident, that planes will be landing on a third runway by 2035. That sounds worryingly similar to the vainglorious delivery timetable once claimed during the sorry saga called HS2.
Turning the Oxford-Cambridge arc into “Europe’s Silicon Valley” is aiming high and has its own controversies, but at least that is an ambition with plausible claims to be good for growth. Betting on Heathrow expansion looks like an excursion into political Death Valley.
The Oxford Cambridge arc should maybe be bolstered by a massively expanded Luton airport
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
Queuing to take off at Heathrow is the worst. Time just completely slows down. On @Leon's concept of noom (not the diet brand) I wonder whether he includes songs because this one does for me, I don't know why, somewhat unexplainable but definitely makes me miss my kids even though I'll see them again in a couple of days
I've wondered if Noom can be applied to art; obviously it is mostly relevant to architecture, but maybe painting, even music...
Certainly, English lacks words to describe spiritual states, perhaps because the British/English are a pragmatic, empirical people not given to religious passons, and when we do - the Reformation - it goes horribly wrong. Thus the language reflects its creators?
Consider all the many words for different kinds of snow, in Inuit; if we constantly experienced spiritual moments the way Greenlanders experience snow, we'd likely have a better lexicon to differentiate these raptures and miseries
Noom is one attempt to fill the gap
I suggest the language exists, but is a) Balkanised and b) Neglected through embarrassment / lack of familiarity.
OTOH, even Wesley had to reach for "my was strangely warmed", as if it was a cheese scone.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
I actually think that there is a gap in the market for - "This place needs fixing. I won't lie to you - the others will - it will take decades. This is the plan....."
If there was one of the parties would surely be heading in that direction. They are not. We are hemmed in by interest groups all of whom can shout louder than the diffuse beneficiaries.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
I actually think that there is a gap in the market for - "This place needs fixing. I won't lie to you - the others will - it will take decades. This is the plan....."
If there was one of the parties would surely be heading in that direction. They are not. We are hemmed in by interest groups all of whom can shout louder than the diffuse beneficiaries.
I do not see any politicians with the skills and instincts for that.
All of them are salespeople, who would be most at home on The Apprentice. Where the ability to markup indifferent goods and sell them at high prices to mugs is the qualifying skill.
They believe that all they need is a better pitch - the actual policies are unchangeable, just need to be fed to the public in the right way.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
With all due respect, go forth and multiply you horrid troll.
Why are we not allowed to label people as autistic, whereas everyone here feels absolutely happy to label Trump as a sociopath, narcissist and/or psychopath - see below - which could be deemed as deeply insulting to PB's happy community of sociopaths (@HYUFD), narcissists (me) and psychopaths (@Dura_Ace)?
Leave me alone. I don't @ you with Internet based psychiatric diagnoses.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
And what caused the chronically low growth since the financial crisis? Austerity.
TBF there might be a good reason why an article about politics went unnoticed in... March 2020... and nothing to do with the merits, or otherwise, of the writing
I know. My timing was sub-optimal. But I was right then and what I said applies even more now. It is worth rereading those articles because they discuss directly both what @Foxy has written about in his excellent header and what is being discussed BTL.
One thing I am good at is spotting the start of what will turn out to be bloody great scandals or disasters (see the Online Safety Bill, for instance). The Cassandra of PB, that's me.
I have not read your article yet. I have read Foxy's but I find the opposite to be the issue in Britain - not a lack of restrictions on an elected leader - a surfeit of restrictions. We hear daily of our central bank's disastrous record, our civil service's useless or outright malicious activities, Natural England killing the economy for bats or jumping spiders, toothless regulators with a revolving door into water company directorships, the Supreme Court taking extraordinary steps into the realm of politics with judicial reviews. We ultimately blame the elected Government for the lack of progress, yet these bodies are proudly 'independent' and make a virtue of resisting/ignoring politicians, and by extension ignoring the democratically expressed wishes of the population. That is my concern, not that a politician gets in who causes a rumpus. I bloody hope they do shake things up - will they shake things up enough is my question.
The response to your point about lawfare is the one I made in this header in the AD Bill -
"This Bill will undoubtedly lead to legal challenge, followed by the usual complaints that lawyers and judges are acting like legislators. Well, legislators should bloody well do their job properly then if they don’t like that. It is time for Parliament to rediscover its moral compass, its proper role in the democratic process and insist that this possible change be debated, consulted on and scrutinised properly, thoroughly and evidence called from all affected parties. If that takes time, so be it."
And yet some of the BTL responses were to the effect that expecting proper scrutiny was somehow an impertinence. Well if you don't have it during Parliament you'll get it elsewhere. Unless of course by "shaking things up" you mean the person at the top doing what they want without any scrutiny at all.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
And what caused the chronically low growth since the financial crisis? Austerity.
More the cost of doing anything other than investing in property. Which, by government fiat, is guaranteed high return market.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Stop pretending there won't be an impact.
Country A sells a product to Country B (or rather, companies in A sell to people/companies in B ).
If the cost is £100 from A to B, companies in B then might sell on the product for (say) £120; making their £20 markup. Country A makes the item for £80.
If a tariff of 25% is imposed by B for all imports then several things have to happen:
A continues to sell at £100 - B will pay £125, £25 to the B government and £100 to A. B then either sells on for £120, taking the £5 hit and going bust eventually, or raises its price to either £145 or £150 depending on whether they want to retain their markup or their margin. If the good is so important that consumers in B HAVE to buy it, they become poorer as everything costs more. If its not, then the amount of the product sold will go down (which might then have further knock on effects such as economies of scale causing the unit price to rise further as demand falls!)
Alternatively, A could sell for £80 to B. B still pays £100, but £20 goes to the B government and only £80 to A. A makes no money at all. I'll leave you to decide why A should continue to sell, or even make the product to sell to B. I suppose if B says 'make this for us or else we'll nuke you', then you might. But that isn't a happy world.
After that, that's really it. You can have some sort of 'half way house' options, where A reduces the price to £90 and therefore sell for £112.50 to B so everyone sort of loses but the product might still be viable. Or you could have this crazy idea were the A government will step in and say 'selling this product is so vital to us that we'll pay the tariff - in order to do that, we'll raise income tax by 5% per person'. I'll leave you to decide the fallout from that.
I'd be interested to know what B does with the tariff money it raises. Maybe it can start a foreign aid programme to assist in the producers of the goods in country A perhaps? Say £25 per item sold perhaps?
That's it. Blanket tariffs are bad. Blanket tariffs with the lies that 'the other country will pay', even worse. Because what happens when they inevitably won't?
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
With all due respect, go forth and multiply you horrid troll.
Why are we not allowed to label people as autistic, whereas everyone here feels absolutely happy to label Trump as a sociopath, narcissist and/or psychopath - see below - which could be deemed as deeply insulting to PB's happy community of sociopaths (@HYUFD), narcissists (me) and psychopaths (@Dura_Ace)?
Leave me alone. I don't @ you with Internet based psychiatric diagnoses.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
And what caused the chronically low growth since the financial crisis? Austerity.
More the cost of doing anything other than investing in property In London. Which, by government fiat, is guaranteed high return market.
FTFY because if investing in property elsewhere made financial sense we would be seeing work to get HS2 to Manchester and elsewhere..
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
I actually think that there is a gap in the market for - "This place needs fixing. I won't lie to you - the others will - it will take decades. This is the plan....."
There wasn't in 2017... have we as a collective electorate grown up enough since then?
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
With all due respect, go forth and multiply you horrid troll.
Why are we not allowed to label people as autistic, whereas everyone here feels absolutely happy to label Trump as a sociopath, narcissist and/or psychopath - see below - which could be deemed as deeply insulting to PB's happy community of sociopaths (@HYUFD), narcissists (me) and psychopaths (@Dura_Ace)?
You use "autism" as a label to stereotype "abnormal".
Now you can counter with "I love "aspies", all my friends are on the spectrum", but that is irrelevant based on your earlier offensive post
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
And what caused the chronically low growth since the financial crisis? Austerity.
Running a deficit of 10-11% of GDP indefinitely is not self-financing. That’s the argument made by US Republicans when they say tax cuts are self-financing.
Cutting the deficit is essential. The Coalition can fairly be criticised for prioritising the wrong things to be cut and ring-fenced.
I know there are quite a few people on PB who are interested in military things, the Falklands, and a even a couple who are into politics so thought I would share a fantastic podcast I stumbled across.
It’s called “The Belgrano Diary” produced by the London Review of books and its quite chunky, 6 episodes over just under 6 hours but a brilliant insight into the events leading up to and after the sinking of the Belgrano (unsurprisingly given the title.)
It’s based on the diary of the supply officer on Conqueror which were leaked and seized on by Tam Dalyell (he published ten articles in the LRB which is prob why they produced the podcast).
Am two hours in but it’s fascinating hearing the parliamentary debate clips with Thatcher, Foot, Enoch Powell all sounding like grown-ups and highlighting how poor our current politicians debate.
V interesting listening to the diaries of the preparations and travel to the Falklands of Conqueror, the stalking of the Belgrano, the sinking. Interviews with crew of Conqueror and a survivor from the Belgrano.
Anyway, thought I would recommend it and post a link so everyone with apple products can easily listen via Apple Podcasts.
It still interests me, as an exercise in human psychology, why the fairly obvious story of what happened about the sinking of the Belgrano hasn't come out.
The one thing our system does have over the US one is that a PM can be deposed at any time. A President is there for a fixed term. To all intents and purposes, no matter what lunacies Trump inflicts on them, the American people are stuck with Trump until January 2029. As is the world, of course.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
And what caused the chronically low growth since the financial crisis? Austerity.
More the cost of doing anything other than investing in property In London. Which, by government fiat, is guaranteed high return market.
FTFY because if investing in property elsewhere made financial sense we would be seeing work to get HS2 to Manchester and elsewhere..
Tower blocks of flats are quite common speculation in Manchester, these days. Lots of smaller developments, anywhere there is ground. See also property in Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh etc.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
I agree that the trade deficit is a symptom of our defective economic policies rather than a cause in itself but it is a measure as to whether our economy is sustainable and it hasn't been for nearly 30 years. I want to address the symptoms that cause it. These are indeed low growth and productivity along with excess consumption. If we address these the trade deficit should take care of itself.
Higher investment and indeed higher growth does not necessarily mean a higher trade deficit. Take the example of Germany over the last 50 years (at least until recently). They invested heavily and artificially reduced domestic consumption with a combination of tax policies and a social ethos. The result was growth driven by exports and an ever increasing flow of income from elsewhere as that surplus bought up assets elsewhere. A booming economy only sucks in imports when it is consumption focused and we buy more stuff from abroad than we can actually pay for. Unfortunately, that is what our governments have gone for because it is popular and makes people feel better off in the short term. As GDP is measured a consumption boom can create "growth" but it will always come at a price.
We need growth driven by investment, by increased productivity as a result of that investment and better training and by more output rather than consumption.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Stop pretending there won't be an impact.
Country A sells a product to Country B (or rather, companies in A sell to people/companies in B ).
If the cost is £100 from A to B, companies in B then might sell on the product for (say) £120; making their £20 markup. Country A makes the item for £80.
If a tariff of 25% is imposed by B for all imports then several things have to happen:
A continues to sell at £100 - B will pay £125, £25 to the B government and £100 to A. B then either sells on for £120, taking the £5 hit and going bust eventually, or raises its price to either £145 or £150 depending on whether they want to retain their markup or their margin. If the good is so important that consumers in B HAVE to buy it, they become poorer as everything costs more. If its not, then the amount of the product sold will go down (which might then have further knock on effects such as economies of scale causing the unit price to rise further as demand falls!)
Alternatively, A could sell for £80 to B. B still pays £100, but £20 goes to the B government and only £80 to A. A makes no money at all. I'll leave you to decide why A should continue to sell, or even make the product to sell to B. I suppose if B says 'make this for us or else we'll nuke you', then you might. But that isn't a happy world.
After that, that's really it. You can have some sort of 'half way house' options, where A reduces the price to £90 and therefore sell for £112.50 to B so everyone sort of loses but the product might still be viable. Or you could have this crazy idea were the A government will step in and say 'selling this product is so vital to us that we'll pay the tariff - in order to do that, we'll raise income tax by 5% per person'. I'll leave you to decide the fallout from that.
I'd be interested to know what B does with the tariff money it raises. Maybe it can start a foreign aid programme to assist in the producers of the goods in country A perhaps? Say £25 per item sold perhaps?
That's it. Blanket tariffs are bad. Blanket tariffs with the lies that 'the other country will pay', even worse. Because what happens when they inevitably won't?
You haven't taken currency movements into account. The Canadian currency could depreciate to offset the tariffs entirely.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Yebbut, why are they cowed?
If the threat from Trump is "I won't help you get elected next time" then they are screwed anyway.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Stop pretending there won't be an impact.
Country A sells a product to Country B (or rather, companies in A sell to people/companies in B ).
If the cost is £100 from A to B, companies in B then might sell on the product for (say) £120; making their £20 markup. Country A makes the item for £80.
If a tariff of 25% is imposed by B for all imports then several things have to happen:
A continues to sell at £100 - B will pay £125, £25 to the B government and £100 to A. B then either sells on for £120, taking the £5 hit and going bust eventually, or raises its price to either £145 or £150 depending on whether they want to retain their markup or their margin. If the good is so important that consumers in B HAVE to buy it, they become poorer as everything costs more. If its not, then the amount of the product sold will go down (which might then have further knock on effects such as economies of scale causing the unit price to rise further as demand falls!)
Alternatively, A could sell for £80 to B. B still pays £100, but £20 goes to the B government and only £80 to A. A makes no money at all. I'll leave you to decide why A should continue to sell, or even make the product to sell to B. I suppose if B says 'make this for us or else we'll nuke you', then you might. But that isn't a happy world.
After that, that's really it. You can have some sort of 'half way house' options, where A reduces the price to £90 and therefore sell for £112.50 to B so everyone sort of loses but the product might still be viable. Or you could have this crazy idea were the A government will step in and say 'selling this product is so vital to us that we'll pay the tariff - in order to do that, we'll raise income tax by 5% per person'. I'll leave you to decide the fallout from that.
I'd be interested to know what B does with the tariff money it raises. Maybe it can start a foreign aid programme to assist in the producers of the goods in country A perhaps? Say £25 per item sold perhaps?
That's it. Blanket tariffs are bad. Blanket tariffs with the lies that 'the other country will pay', even worse. Because what happens when they inevitably won't?
You haven't taken currency movements into account. The Canadian currency could depreciate to offset the tariffs entirely.
What if the US dollar depreciates instead?
It's got a much bigger trade deficit than Canada and is being led by a lunatic.
The one thing our system does have over the US one is that a PM can be deposed at any time. A President is there for a fixed term. To all intents and purposes, no matter what lunacies Trump inflicts on them, the American people are stuck with Trump until January 2029. As is the world, of course.
Sadly missing the words "at least" in your penultimate sentence.
I know there are quite a few people on PB who are interested in military things, the Falklands, and a even a couple who are into politics so thought I would share a fantastic podcast I stumbled across.
It’s called “The Belgrano Diary” produced by the London Review of books and its quite chunky, 6 episodes over just under 6 hours but a brilliant insight into the events leading up to and after the sinking of the Belgrano (unsurprisingly given the title.)
It’s based on the diary of the supply officer on Conqueror which were leaked and seized on by Tam Dalyell (he published ten articles in the LRB which is prob why they produced the podcast).
Am two hours in but it’s fascinating hearing the parliamentary debate clips with Thatcher, Foot, Enoch Powell all sounding like grown-ups and highlighting how poor our current politicians debate.
V interesting listening to the diaries of the preparations and travel to the Falklands of Conqueror, the stalking of the Belgrano, the sinking. Interviews with crew of Conqueror and a survivor from the Belgrano.
Anyway, thought I would recommend it and post a link so everyone with apple products can easily listen via Apple Podcasts.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
It's not so much being afraid to do them as afraid of the consequences - namely, losing the next election.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Trump has in the past compared VAT to tariffs. This might be a problem if he still believes they are the same.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
Indeed. Starmer knew from the moment May triggered Article 50 that Brexit would be a shit show. Now he is in Government he should be working hard to mitigate the disaster. Instead he has capitulated to Murdoch and Dacre. They hate him anyway so why doesn't he just ignore them.
Of course it's possible that an authoritarian populist could be elected as PM. The question is whether, once he overreached, as all authoritarians do, he could be got rid of easily. Here I think we have two crucial safeguards.
Firstly, we have a Parliamentary system, not a Presidential system. That means that, at any time, 326 MPs can vote to dismiss the Prime Minister. That's a safeguard that simply doesn't exist in the American system, which is why Presidential systems naturally tend towards dictatorship, while Parliamentary systems can be prone to paralysis (see the French Fourth Republic and Italy for the stereotypical examples of that). Impeachment, which is supposed to need evidence of a crime and does need a two-thirds majority in the Senate, is a constraint, but a pale shadow of what we have.
Secondly, we have a tradition of democratic practices unequalled in the world, with a couple of insignificant exceptions (Switzerland and Iceland). While historians no longer like looking at our history solely as the inevitable triumph of the Parliamentary system and representative democracy, there is no doubt that history is a hugely important constraint here. Left-wingers undermine respect for our history, or to pretend that democracy is a sham for the exploitation of the poor/blacks/trans people/fashionable minority du jour, but I've never got the feeling that they really believe it. Americans do not understand or celebrate history the way old world societies do (an American friend once told me that the best thing about the past is that it's over), so this constraint does not operate in the same way there.
While our system does not make it easy for authoritarians, however, there are two circumstances in which one could gain some traction.
Firstly, paralysis, like we saw between 2016 and 2019, when the government was unable to implement the will of the people, expressed in the largest democratic vote for anything in the country's history. The public was astonishing patient, but if that had continued much longer, we could easily have seen a loss of confidence in the political system, leading to some kind of authoritarian. The answer to this is that governments respond to the will of the people if directly expressed in a referendum, which after all the government held in the first place.
Secondly, a continued stagnation or decline in living standards. The answer to this is to implement policies that basic economics says deliver growth - low taxes, low spending and light regulation.
A responsive, economically literate government then is the best answer to the Trumps or Corbyns of this world. And a clueless, out-of-touch, arrogant, economically illiterate government is their best friend.
Oh shit maybe we're in more trouble than I thought ...
The problem any government faces is that our difficulties are very deep rooted and have accumulated over an extended period of delusion and self indulgence.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
As usual you ruin some good points with a Trumpian obsession about the trade deficit, which is a symptom of our problems, not a problem in itself - typical of someone commenting on trade without any training in international economics. It would matter if we had a fixed exchange rate, or committed the catastrophic blunder of joining the euro, but with a floating exchange rate, where you borrow in your own currency, it doesn't matter in itself at all.
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
And what caused the chronically low growth since the financial crisis? Austerity.
More the cost of doing anything other than investing in property In London. Which, by government fiat, is guaranteed high return market.
FTFY because if investing in property elsewhere made financial sense we would be seeing work to get HS2 to Manchester and elsewhere..
Tower blocks of flats are quite common speculation in Manchester, these days. Lots of smaller developments, anywhere there is ground. See also property in Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh etc.
Thanks to the current modernisation / automation / productivity improvement project I'm currently working on and the previous one - shall we just say that London is very different market to the more provincial ones...
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
It's not so much being afraid to do them as afraid of the consequences - namely, losing the next election.
That's the point.
If Republicans don't stand up to Trump, they are gonna lose.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
It's not so much being afraid to do them as afraid of the consequences - namely, losing the next election.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
Indeed. Starmer knew from the moment May triggered Article 50 that Brexit would be a shit show. Now he is in Government he should be working hard to mitigate the disaster. Instead he has capitulated to Murdoch and Dacre. They hate him anyway so why doesn't he just ignore them.
Yep - framing policy to forlornly appeal to a demographic that will always hate you and never give you even the benefit of the doubt is not smart.
Interesting that Trump kingmaker and prolific tweeter @elonmusk has not commented on the imposition of massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico… and China …. 🧐
Here is Tesla just last week warning on the impact of tariffs on its profits and revenues…
Thanks for an interesting article. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. However Foxy is slightly too pessimistic.
While we don't emphasise it, all societies are ultimately constrained by the possible fact of violence. For a Trumpian anti constitution set up to work in the UK it would have to have not only an elected outfit but also have and keep violence on its side. That is mainly the armed forces and police + the mob.
Yes the government can ignore the Supreme court etc and just get on with it; but only if the forces of violence are on its side. For two reasons: government illegality in the end can only be enforced by state violence so it has to retain its loyalty. And what was official violence used against the government would soon overcome it.
Armed forces and police owe their allegience to the crown not the state; this matters.
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
Indeed. Starmer knew from the moment May triggered Article 50 that Brexit would be a shit show. Now he is in Government he should be working hard to mitigate the disaster. Instead he has capitulated to Murdoch and Dacre. They hate him anyway so why doesn't he just ignore them.
He should have been working hard to "mitigate the disaster" in opposition too, instead of trying to create it.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
Tariffs against industrial imports is how Germany successfully mechanised its economy, and afaicr a large part of how America did the same. It is a shibboleth of both left and right in Britain (the left because such a thing smacks of boorish nationalism, the right because of the influence of Maggie) that tariffs are an abomination, but the fact is that sometimes they work. The free market is a powerful and magical way to distribute resources, but if one player is more advanced and well-resourced, a completely free market will play to their advantage, as it did for Britain in the 19th century, hence powerful enough rivals introducing barriers so that they could develop their own industries.
You can use tariffs to protect a specific industry you want to nurture in your own country. Many countries have done this successfully.
Blanket tariffs on every single import are ultimately self-defeating: Autarchy is not the route to prosperity.
A tariff of 25% is not a trade embargo. It's the same as the level of VAT in Sweden.
Stop pretending there won't be an impact.
Country A sells a product to Country B (or rather, companies in A sell to people/companies in B ).
If the cost is £100 from A to B, companies in B then might sell on the product for (say) £120; making their £20 markup. Country A makes the item for £80.
If a tariff of 25% is imposed by B for all imports then several things have to happen:
A continues to sell at £100 - B will pay £125, £25 to the B government and £100 to A. B then either sells on for £120, taking the £5 hit and going bust eventually, or raises its price to either £145 or £150 depending on whether they want to retain their markup or their margin. If the good is so important that consumers in B HAVE to buy it, they become poorer as everything costs more. If its not, then the amount of the product sold will go down (which might then have further knock on effects such as economies of scale causing the unit price to rise further as demand falls!)
Alternatively, A could sell for £80 to B. B still pays £100, but £20 goes to the B government and only £80 to A. A makes no money at all. I'll leave you to decide why A should continue to sell, or even make the product to sell to B. I suppose if B says 'make this for us or else we'll nuke you', then you might. But that isn't a happy world.
After that, that's really it. You can have some sort of 'half way house' options, where A reduces the price to £90 and therefore sell for £112.50 to B so everyone sort of loses but the product might still be viable. Or you could have this crazy idea were the A government will step in and say 'selling this product is so vital to us that we'll pay the tariff - in order to do that, we'll raise income tax by 5% per person'. I'll leave you to decide the fallout from that.
I'd be interested to know what B does with the tariff money it raises. Maybe it can start a foreign aid programme to assist in the producers of the goods in country A perhaps? Say £25 per item sold perhaps?
That's it. Blanket tariffs are bad. Blanket tariffs with the lies that 'the other country will pay', even worse. Because what happens when they inevitably won't?
You haven't taken currency movements into account. The Canadian currency could depreciate to offset the tariffs entirely.
I am well aware of currency movements, but a currency movement of 25% in one night to offset the impact of tariffs..... isn't good either. Everything Canada needs to buy from the outside world has suddenly just got 25% more expensive.
If you're looking at it entirely from a US perspective, then they might say '"Who cares', but in an integrated global economy, a currency shift of that magnitude in the space of a few hours (how much did GBP move on 24th June 2016? It was a lot, but I don't think it was 25%!) will have a terrible impact on the Canadian economy and anyone Canada trade with (including the US).
Hypothesis: a fearty, vow breaking, Tory-lite Labour government is as damaging to the Union as a Johnson-led Tory one. Worse in a way as the ‘if only you vote for us progressives things will be better’ appeal is entirely gone.
Yet the SNP are also polling a pathetic 31%, 10% down on 2021 and well short of a majority even with the Greens.
They would therefore likely have to do a deal with Scottish Labour anyway to keep out Reform. Which would send some SNP voters to Alba ripping Scottish nationalism apart
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
Indeed. Starmer knew from the moment May triggered Article 50 that Brexit would be a shit show. Now he is in Government he should be working hard to mitigate the disaster. Instead he has capitulated to Murdoch and Dacre. They hate him anyway so why doesn't he just ignore them.
He should have been working hard to "mitigate the disaster" in opposition too, instead of trying to create it.
There is not a great deal an opposition can do to mitigate a disastrous government policy other than criticise said policy or demand a referendum to overturn thre policy before it is implemented.
My point was since they have been given the opportunity to actually do something to make Brexit at least a little less dreadful, Labour have singularly failed (so far) to grasp the nettle.
Queuing to take off at Heathrow is the worst. Time just completely slows down. On @Leon's concept of noom (not the diet brand) I wonder whether he includes songs because this one does for me, I don't know why, somewhat unexplainable but definitely makes me miss my kids even though I'll see them again in a couple of days
I've wondered if Noom can be applied to art; obviously it is mostly relevant to architecture, but maybe painting, even music...
Certainly, English lacks words to describe spiritual states, perhaps because the British/English are a pragmatic, empirical people not given to religious passons, and when we do - the Reformation - it goes horribly wrong. Thus the language reflects its creators?
Consider all the many words for different kinds of snow, in Inuit; if we constantly experienced spiritual moments the way Greenlanders experience snow, we'd likely have a better lexicon to differentiate these raptures and miseries
Noom is one attempt to fill the gap
Yes. And given marks out of 10 for noom. 10s are scored by: The last 20 minutes of Act III of Die Walkure; the opening of Rosenkavalier; Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin; Bach's Passacaglia; Beethoven op 74 1st movement; Books 1 and 2 of Wordsworth's Prelude; everything Vermeer ever did; and some other things too.
A Reform victory in 28-29 is now basically nailed on (as those senior Labour staffers admit in the Guardian article today)
A sea-change in British politics, and one, I think, that we can all applaud. As we unite, as a nation, behind Big Nige
It isn’t. While the polling average is for a hung parliament it also has Labour projected most seats on 278, then the Conservatives on 138, only then Reform on 82 and the LDs on 73
The whole Trump might reconsider rejoining WHO thing is surely his whole weird approach based on playing hard ball in business deals.
When he announced withdrawal his big issue was that the US paid $500m and China paid something like $30m and that “wasn’t fair”.
I can see him rejoining if the WHO accept parity of payments with China and the US either increasing China’s bill or slashing the US bill.
Then Trump can tell the public that he got them a good deal. He made a great deal. The WHO needs him so much they accepted his amazing deal. And he screwed China.
Yup, Trump just wants a deal. The art of a deal.
Same with his trade tariffs, crazy as they are some financial commentators support them.
“The Art of the Deal” being, of course, a ghostwritten book that had very little to do with the real Trump. It’s his catchphrase, not some esoteric knowledge he possesses.
Tony Schwartz, who subsequently regretted writing the book explained in 2016 that he had made arrangements to quickly leave the USA should that become necessary. I trust he currently has plans in place for a swift getaway.
A Reform victory in 28-29 is now basically nailed on (as those senior Labour staffers admit in the Guardian article today)
A sea-change in British politics, and one, I think, that we can all applaud. As we unite, as a nation, behind Big Nige
It isn’t. While the polling average is for a hung parliament it also has Labour projected most seats on 278, then the Conservatives on 138, only then Reform on 82 and the LDs on 73
This is hardly news. It is why the Liberal Democrats have been talking about constitutional reform for decades. Reform of the voting system, of the House of Lords, increased powers for local and national governments, and at least codifying the rules, if not actually creating a full written constitution.
One strength of the British system, though, is that it is Parliamentary and manifestly unfit leaders: Johnson, Truss, can be removed quickly. Of course this does require MPs to think for themselves and focus on their duties as representatives rather than as party delegates...
A written constitution didn’t stop Hitler anymore than Trump.
The upper house in the US is fully elected and now controlled by Trump’s party anyway
Draw your own conclusions, but Donald Trump is not behaving like a leader who expects democratic accountability for himself or his party next year or in 2028.
(1) Even if he does respect the Constitution, which seems most unlikely given his many crimes against it but is not impossible, he will face no further democratic accountability - if he’s not a dictator he’s term limited and if he is it’s irrelevant;
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Which begs the question, why are Republicans not up in arms?
@Scaramucci Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Because the remaining ones are either so cowed they won't oppose him or just as bad as he is.
Not doing the right things because you are afraid to is a political disease we find on both sides of the Atlantic. The current UK government also suffers from this, as do many others in Europe. It is totally destructive and self-defeating.
Indeed. Starmer knew from the moment May triggered Article 50 that Brexit would be a shit show. Now he is in Government he should be working hard to mitigate the disaster. Instead he has capitulated to Murdoch and Dacre. They hate him anyway so why doesn't he just ignore them.
He should have been working hard to "mitigate the disaster" in opposition too, instead of trying to create it.
There is not a great deal an opposition can do to mitigate a disastrous government policy other than criticise said policy or demand a referendum to overturn thre policy before it is implemented.
My point was since they have been given the opportunity to actually do something to make Brexit at least a little less dreadful, Labour have singularly failed (so far) to grasp the nettle.
Support an alternative instead of mindlessly blocking everything in a doomed attempt to overturn the biggest democratic vote in British history?
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss instead of going "ok, we wouldn't have wanted to start from here but we're here now, what's the best way forward?"
That being the case, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that in government they haven't shown any ability to move forward.
Hard to know with the Trump Tariffs whether Trump is really dumb - and truly doesn't understand that they only get paid by US consumers - or whether he is one of the seven deadly demons visited upon America and is doing it for shitz n gigglez/his rich buddies said it would be a great idea.
Whichever, not sure it will play out for all of them. I wouldn't want to be a Tesla franchise owner in Canada.
They are dumb, but I’m not sure if prices/ inflation raise massively in the USA that the MAGA lot will blame Trump. They’ll blame Mexico/ Canada etc for not rolling over.
I think Trump runs the risk of a) countries ganging up against the US and b) others turning to China
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
So to be PM you basically need to be a narcissist or sociopath or autistic/aspergers
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
NPD typically comes with abusive behaviour towards loved ones and a strong victimhood complex. I’m not sure there’s evidence of either from Cameron, or indeed Blair. Narcissism yes, NPD (which is on the sociopath spectrum) not so much.
My comment was mainly in jest, tho - for @Mexicanpete - I don't hand out the autist label glibly. I am very sure Brown, May and Starmer are on that spectrum
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
With all due respect, go forth and multiply you horrid troll.
Why are we not allowed to label people as autistic, whereas everyone here feels absolutely happy to label Trump as a sociopath, narcissist and/or psychopath - see below - which could be deemed as deeply insulting to PB's happy community of sociopaths (@HYUFD), narcissists (me) and psychopaths (@Dura_Ace)?
...and just one more thing.
Are you not equalising autism with sociopathy, narcissism and psychopathy? They are all neuro- divergent conditions true, but after that I think the similarity between autism and the rest stops.
One reason I found the coronation so 'unrelatable' was it didn't seem to reflect what really matters right now. We need a Head of State committed to defending Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law against a government that might seek to use the enormous power of the machine at its disposal to undermine those things.
No we don’t, if we had an elected President now it would probably be Farage anyway.
Judges can enforce parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law as they did over the prorogation. The King is head of state and thankfully not a politician
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Your problem is you're claiming your opinion is a fact.
Also relevant to this thread is this excellent article by Matthew Syed in today's Times about the helicopter/plane crash a few days ago and how Trump's response endangers one of the few sectors which has got the whole investigation / learning lessons shtick right.
1. "the most beautiful thing about aviation’s safety culture is that the cardinal sin is not to make a mistake (since we all do) but to fail to report it."
2. "How will they feel about being open and honest when .... their testimony might be surgically removed from context and weaponised by competing sides......? Let me suggest that the result will be a movement away from openness and learning and towards secrecy and concealment."
And finally this - 3. "As one put it: “How can investigators do their job objectively when they know that if their findings don’t conform to what Trump wants to hear, they might be publicly rebuked?”"
Discouraging the reporting of problems, encouraging concealment and dishonesty and believing what you want to be true so that you do not get told the truth are at the heart of all scandals. If this happens in aviation people will die.
Trump is a psychopath in the clinical sense of the term:
Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
When you understand that, a lot of what he says and does becomes a lot more explicable.
Oh gawd, more drivel
He does speak and behave exactly like my evil brother in law, who physically and mentally abused 2 successive wives and then took them both through about a decade of fruitless vexatious law suits. I remember being taken aback by the exact resemblance when he loomed over Hilary Clinton in that first 2016 debate.
It seems pretty obvious he is has a narcissistic personality disorder. Adjudicating the borderline between that and psychopath is for the professionals.
Don't most successful politicians have a personality disorder? It's genuinely hard to think of exceptions
This century:
Blair: narcissist Brown: autist, high functioning Cameron: severe narcissist T May: autist, not even that high functioning Boris: sociopath sex-freak Truss: QED Sunak: weirdo Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
So to be PM you basically need to be a narcissist or sociopath or autistic/aspergers
Only in Leon's mind. Don't go there HY, its a bollocks thesis.
Hypothesis: a fearty, vow breaking, Tory-lite Labour government is as damaging to the Union as a Johnson-led Tory one. Worse in a way as the ‘if only you vote for us progressives things will be better’ appeal is entirely gone.
Yet the SNP are also polling a pathetic 31%, 10% down on 2021 and well short of a majority even with the Greens.
They would therefore likely have to do a deal with Scottish Labour anyway to keep out Reform. Which would send some SNP voters to Alba ripping Scottish nationalism apart
I keep forgetting there’s arithmetic and HYUFD arithmetic.
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Your problem is you're claiming your opinion is a fact.
Thanks for an interesting article. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. However Foxy is slightly too pessimistic.
While we don't emphasise it, all societies are ultimately constrained by the possible fact of violence. For a Trumpian anti constitution set up to work in the UK it would have to have not only an elected outfit but also have and keep violence on its side. That is mainly the armed forces and police + the mob.
Yes the government can ignore the Supreme court etc and just get on with it; but only if the forces of violence are on its side. For two reasons: government illegality in the end can only be enforced by state violence so it has to retain its loyalty. And what was official violence used against the government would soon overcome it.
Armed forces and police owe their allegience to the crown not the state; this matters.
Yes whereas in a republic like the US Trump is head of the armed forces as President
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Your problem is you're claiming your opinion is a fact.
Hypothesis: a fearty, vow breaking, Tory-lite Labour government is as damaging to the Union as a Johnson-led Tory one. Worse in a way as the ‘if only you vote for us progressives things will be better’ appeal is entirely gone.
Yet the SNP are also polling a pathetic 31%, 10% down on 2021 and well short of a majority even with the Greens.
They would therefore likely have to do a deal with Scottish Labour anyway to keep out Reform. Which would send some SNP voters to Alba ripping Scottish nationalism apart
Just like there are several parties in the Unionist tent, there ought to be room for than one party in the Nationalist tent.
Then they can be quietly shelved while he is parachuting Navy Seals into Nuuk
He might do that once he has imposed tariffs on the EU to follow the tariffs he has now imposed on China, Canada and Mexico. Though Macron has of course promised to send French troops to Greenland if necessary
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Your problem is you're claiming your opinion is a fact.
In our system the leader/PM is always vulnerable in the way that a President simply isn't.
And by the way Incitatus was way more qualified to be Health Secretary than RFK. Not even close.
I am not so sure. We had an albeit low rent dry run with a charismatic charlatan who persuaded the Queen to prorogue Parliament. And to be honest with an 80 seat Parliamentary majority the World was the oyster of our erstwhile charismatic charlatan. The writing was on the wall that all the safeguards were not in place.
The fact that the charismatic charlatan I have in mind was a lazy, feckless grifter negated any seriously dangerous abuse of power, but in wrong hands the results could be incendiary…
That was the dynamic the first time round with Trump. This time his agenda has been well planned - Project 25 might not be the entire template, but there’s an awful lot if it already being pursued - by largely non elected activists and their financial backers.
Trump is rather more than just a frontman for that agenda, but it’s quite a large part of what he is.
The one thing our system does have over the US one is that a PM can be deposed at any time. A President is there for a fixed term. To all intents and purposes, no matter what lunacies Trump inflicts on them, the American people are stuck with Trump until January 2029. As is the world, of course.
Unless the Democrats win a landslide in the midterms next year and impeach him
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
You are so bitter and unfortunately for you nobody is suggesting rejoining including Ed Davey this morning, who like most of us wants closer relationships but ruled out the one thing that would improve growth, the single market
Indeed Davey is against the means testing of WFP, the imposition of IHT on farmers, local house building targets and the 3rd runway at Heathrow affirming he leads the NIMBY party
As for the 3rd runway confirmation by Reeves, I have no idea why she thought it was sensible when so many in her party, including Starmer, have consistently opposed it and it is not going to be operational before 2040 ish even if it even happens
And then we have Trump for the next 4 years and maybe even the Republicans winning in 2028
I have not posted as much recently as I despair at the state of politics and the world order as I only see bitter divisions [on occasions witnessed on here] for years to come and frankly concentrating on my wife, family and friends seems the best place to devote my energies
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Your problem is you're claiming your opinion is a fact.
If that's your standard for evidence, I don't think I'll even waste time clicking on the second.
I know he's a former jailbird although the polling statistics stand up.
Close you eyes tight shut and put your fingers in your ears, but it doesn't change the reality of Brexit as an economic disaster. One that is probably not reversible, although things can be done by a Labour Government to make it less bad. An endeavour they have failed in spectacularly.
Queuing to take off at Heathrow is the worst. Time just completely slows down. On @Leon's concept of noom (not the diet brand) I wonder whether he includes songs because this one does for me, I don't know why, somewhat unexplainable but definitely makes me miss my kids even though I'll see them again in a couple of days
I've wondered if Noom can be applied to art; obviously it is mostly relevant to architecture, but maybe painting, even music...
Certainly, English lacks words to describe spiritual states, perhaps because the British/English are a pragmatic, empirical people not given to religious passons, and when we do - the Reformation - it goes horribly wrong. Thus the language reflects its creators?
Consider all the many words for different kinds of snow, in Inuit; if we constantly experienced spiritual moments the way Greenlanders experience snow, we'd likely have a better lexicon to differentiate these raptures and miseries
Noom is one attempt to fill the gap
Yes. And given marks out of 10 for noom. 10s are scored by: The last 20 minutes of Act III of Die Walkure; the opening of Rosenkavalier; Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin; Bach's Passacaglia; Beethoven op 74 1st movement; Books 1 and 2 of Wordsworth's Prelude; everything Vermeer ever did; and some other things too.
OK let’s allow that
But then, much more interesting are artworks that have DARK Noom, remember that is the tingle of God’s absence, of something bleak, inhuman and wrong, some terrific yet ineffable sadness. Dark Noom can be found in death camps from Tuol Sleng to Trebklinka, or on the battlefields of Flanders, and across Virginia
Art with Dark Noom is a much rarer beast, vanishingly rare
I’d say
Some of the more famous works by the Young British Artists “Die Familie Schneider” Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets have bright AND dark noom You could argue some of the more nihilistic examples of Drill, that vulgar, animalistic worship of violence, greed and misogyny, but I hate tainting G M Hopkins by putting Drill alongside his poetry
is very interesting. They are becoming a threat because the people starting to sympathise with it are not racists or extremes. It's mostly about the incompetence of all the others.
I expect Reform to continue its process of detoxifying, deTrumpifying and making it clear that it is an old fashioned 1950s centrist social democratic party + nationalist + low migration policy + firmly anti racist (sotto voce: who have eccentric members some of them extreme, uncosted Noddy economics and no core of leaders, and no actual evidence of competence).
Already all this 'Far Right wing' stuff loks very old fashioned.
In our system the leader/PM is always vulnerable in the way that a President simply isn't.
And by the way Incitatus was way more qualified to be Health Secretary than RFK. Not even close.
I am not so sure. We had an albeit low rent dry run with a charismatic charlatan who persuaded the Queen to prorogue Parliament. And to be honest with an 80 seat Parliamentary majority the World was the oyster of our erstwhile charismatic charlatan. The writing was on the wall that all the safeguards were not in place.
The fact that the charismatic charlatan I have in mind was a lazy, feckless grifter negated any seriously dangerous abuse of power, but in wrong hands the results could be incendiary…
That was the dynamic the first time round with Trump. This time his agenda has been well planned - Project 25 might not be the entire template, but there’s an awful lot if it already being pursued - by largely non elected activists and their financial backers.
Trump is rather more than just a frontman for that agenda, but it’s quite a large part of what he is.
You misunderstood my wild assertions. I had Johnson in mind, but he was too lazy to pull off the role of World King.
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss
Bollocks
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Your problem is you're claiming your opinion is a fact.
Meanwhile, this spectacularly sunny Sunday, todays Rawnsley:
Anger about the chancellor’s new commitment to back the expansion of the London airport and others is mingled with bewilderment. A lot of Labour people are scratching their heads trying to work out why she wants to burn political capital on a hugely contentious project that couldn’t possibly be complete until long after she’s done at the Treasury and Sir Keir is gone from Number 10.
Hostile fire was instant, will be continuous for years ahead and comes from several camps with which Labour has wanted to be friendly. Labour MPs and ministers[‘] crystal balls are darkening with a dystopian vista of years of protest and resistance to Heathrow expansion in inquiry rooms, the law courts and parliament, and from antagonistic Londoners and environmental activists. Half of the cabinet – including Darren Jones, the number two at the Treasury, and Sir Keir himself – voted against a third runway the last time the idea was put to parliament.
There are fierce arguments about whether Heathrow expansion would make a meaningful contribution to growth anyway and wildly varying estimates about how much it would cost. Heathrow’s previous plans were priced at about £14bn when an estimate was produced in 2014. At least double that number, probably triple it. If investors can be found to stump up that kind of cash, they will want a return. This will mean higher landing charges, which will most likely be passed on to customers in increased ticket prices. The chancellor asserts, but can’t possibly be confident, that planes will be landing on a third runway by 2035. That sounds worryingly similar to the vainglorious delivery timetable once claimed during the sorry saga called HS2.
Turning the Oxford-Cambridge arc into “Europe’s Silicon Valley” is aiming high and has its own controversies, but at least that is an ambition with plausible claims to be good for growth. Betting on Heathrow expansion looks like an excursion into political Death Valley.
Both Heathrow third runway, and a high speed rail link to the north were on the agenda when Blair took office in 1997.
Comments
This century:
Blair: narcissist
Brown: autist, high functioning
Cameron: severe narcissist
T May: autist, not even that high functioning
Boris: sociopath sex-freak
Truss: QED
Sunak: weirdo
Starmer: ultra-autist, never dreams, made of wood
Probably the most normal in that bunch is Sunak, and he's really not normal, which says it all
He has vanished from public life more than Tony Blair did.
Corbyn would have used primary legislation on the basis that The Will Of The People demanded it. I could easily see him using it to overturn court judgements against a policy he held dear.
From the FT: "An administration official said each order contained “a retaliation clause . . . so that if any country chooses to retaliate in any way, the signal will be to take further action with respect to likely increased tariffs”."
For everyone else:
1. customs duties are applied to imports but not to domestic production, so they inhibit trade. VAT is applied irrespective of the origin of goods.
2. Customs is an absolute cost to businesses and recorded in COGS in their P&L. VAT is a flow through and only a cost to the end buyer. Just like US state sales and use taxes.
Because US sales taxes are absolute costs with no input recovery they raise a not dissimilar amount to VAT at much lower headline rates.
Blair is maybe more Messianic than narcissist
Cameron's problem is a kind of self-belief so pervesely strong it becomes a pathology. Is there a syndrome that fits this condition, the tendency to dangerously overrate one's own abilities? It's not "narcissism" per se
The old old pitch of the populates, since before Caesar, was “we will get shit done”.
A Yes, but it is very very rarely used in this way.
Consider the number of times the last government(s) were knocked back by the courts. They could easily turned up in the commons with a Bill overruling everything. But they didn't.
We believe that we are entitled to a higher standard of living than we earn. We think we are a rich country whilst we are in fact net debtors as a result of accumulated trade deficits. We are reluctant to face the consequences of addressing these problems or elect governments of either stripe that pretend that they don't exist or that there are magical, simple, painless solutions.
An economically literate government would be trying to drive down consumption or current spending and increasing investment. No one has been brave enough to do this. We continue to treat our trade deficit with indifference.
An economically literate government would recognise the need to encourage investment in production in this country whether by AZ, battery manufacturers, North sea production or airports. Our governments are not willing to drive through these kind of developments because they are trapped by the well meaning nonsense we have surrounded ourselves with.
An economically literate government would recognise that piling taxation on work rather than wealth is completely counter productive. An economically literate government would ensure that people earning money pay no more than those who receive it from investments.
How does an economically literate government ever get elected in the face of a largely ignorant media and electorate who have been lied to for so long? In turn these simple propositions would bring a short term reduction in our standard of living, a willingness to override NIMBY style interests, and an attack on the tax breaks afforded to the retired. There is no coalition remaining that could hope to win an election.
However, I fear that this investigation stands a good chance of not getting to the facts of what happened - as the 'facts' have already been decided by people who should have remained quiet. And this is really bad.
http://www.noom.com
Dr David Owen published a good book on the phycology of leadership. He advanced the theory that eventually, everyone goes a bit loopy at the top. Too much of people praising the king.
Further, that because intense self belief is required to get to the top, this reinforces an existing issue. And that an added issue was *initial success* - "I am successful, the people love me, and I am surrounded by loyal supporters. I must be Great."
He suggested that the only one, in his time range, who got out OK was Major - who hated the job, by the end, so much, that it was a relief to leave.
Real estate is the main vestige of feudalism remaining in the economy.
Anger about the chancellor’s new commitment to back the expansion of the London airport and others is mingled with bewilderment. A lot of Labour people are scratching their heads trying to work out why she wants to burn political capital on a hugely contentious project that couldn’t possibly be complete until long after she’s done at the Treasury and Sir Keir is gone from Number 10.
Hostile fire was instant, will be continuous for years ahead and comes from several camps with which Labour has wanted to be friendly. Labour MPs and ministers[‘] crystal balls are darkening with a dystopian vista of years of protest and resistance to Heathrow expansion in inquiry rooms, the law courts and parliament, and from antagonistic Londoners and environmental activists. Half of the cabinet – including Darren Jones, the number two at the Treasury, and Sir Keir himself – voted against a third runway the last time the idea was put to parliament.
There are fierce arguments about whether Heathrow expansion would make a meaningful contribution to growth anyway and wildly varying estimates about how much it would cost. Heathrow’s previous plans were priced at about £14bn when an estimate was produced in 2014. At least double that number, probably triple it. If investors can be found to stump up that kind of cash, they will want a return. This will mean higher landing charges, which will most likely be passed on to customers in increased ticket prices. The chancellor asserts, but can’t possibly be confident, that planes will be landing on a third runway by 2035. That sounds worryingly similar to the vainglorious delivery timetable once claimed during the sorry saga called HS2.
Turning the Oxford-Cambridge arc into “Europe’s Silicon Valley” is aiming high and has its own controversies, but at least that is an ambition with plausible claims to be good for growth. Betting on Heathrow expansion looks like an excursion into political Death Valley.
(2) The Republicans are not his party (historically he’s linked more to the Democrats). He’s only using them for his own ends, essentially ego, money, power lust and gratification thereof. Since he has never shown the slightest sign of caring for anyone or anything except himself and to a lesser extent one of his daughters, why should he care what happens to the Republicans?
Our problem is not a chronic trade deficit, it's chronically low growth since the financial crisis. Increasing growth would increase our trade deficit, as a booming economy would suck in imports, especially given the chronic stagnation in most of our large trading partners. But it wouldn't matter because it would be financeable, just as companies often make up a cashflow deficit from investing activities and operations with financing activities.
OTOH, even Wesley had to reach for "my was strangely warmed", as if it was a cheese scone.
All of them are salespeople, who would be most at home on The Apprentice. Where the ability to markup indifferent goods and sell them at high prices to mugs is the qualifying skill.
They believe that all they need is a better pitch - the actual policies are unchangeable, just need to be fed to the public in the right way.
"This Bill will undoubtedly lead to legal challenge, followed by the usual complaints that lawyers and judges are acting like legislators. Well, legislators should bloody well do their job properly then if they don’t like that. It is time for Parliament to rediscover its moral compass, its proper role in the democratic process and insist that this possible change be debated, consulted on and scrutinised properly, thoroughly and evidence called from all affected parties. If that takes time, so be it."
See https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/01/22/breaking-her-word/
And yet some of the BTL responses were to the effect that expecting proper scrutiny was somehow an impertinence. Well if you don't have it during Parliament you'll get it elsewhere. Unless of course by "shaking things up" you mean the person at the top doing what they want without any scrutiny at all.
Country A sells a product to Country B (or rather, companies in A sell to people/companies in B ).
If the cost is £100 from A to B, companies in B then might sell on the product for (say) £120; making their £20 markup. Country A makes the item for £80.
If a tariff of 25% is imposed by B for all imports then several things have to happen:
A continues to sell at £100 - B will pay £125, £25 to the B government and £100 to A.
B then either sells on for £120, taking the £5 hit and going bust eventually, or raises its price to either £145 or £150 depending on whether they want to retain their markup or their margin.
If the good is so important that consumers in B HAVE to buy it, they become poorer as everything costs more. If its not, then the amount of the product sold will go down (which might then have further knock on effects such as economies of scale causing the unit price to rise further as demand falls!)
Alternatively, A could sell for £80 to B. B still pays £100, but £20 goes to the B government and only £80 to A.
A makes no money at all. I'll leave you to decide why A should continue to sell, or even make the product to sell to B. I suppose if B says 'make this for us or else we'll nuke you', then you might. But that isn't a happy world.
After that, that's really it. You can have some sort of 'half way house' options, where A reduces the price to £90 and therefore sell for £112.50 to B so everyone sort of loses but the product might still be viable. Or you could have this crazy idea were the A government will step in and say 'selling this product is so vital to us that we'll pay the tariff - in order to do that, we'll raise income tax by 5% per person'. I'll leave you to decide the fallout from that.
I'd be interested to know what B does with the tariff money it raises. Maybe it can start a foreign aid programme to assist in the producers of the goods in country A perhaps? Say £25 per item sold perhaps?
That's it.
Blanket tariffs are bad.
Blanket tariffs with the lies that 'the other country will pay', even worse. Because what happens when they inevitably won't?
An interesting conversation.
@Scaramucci
Why isn’t there more organized, dissent? Public servants need to explain the danger. It has to be elected officials getting together to stop this sort of crazy nonsense. A few Republicans could change the course of history and save their own party.
Now you can counter with "I love "aspies", all my friends are on the spectrum", but that is irrelevant based on your earlier offensive post
Cutting the deficit is essential. The Coalition can fairly be criticised for prioritising the wrong things to be cut and ring-fenced.
Higher investment and indeed higher growth does not necessarily mean a higher trade deficit. Take the example of Germany over the last 50 years (at least until recently). They invested heavily and artificially reduced domestic consumption with a combination of tax policies and a social ethos. The result was growth driven by exports and an ever increasing flow of income from elsewhere as that surplus bought up assets elsewhere. A booming economy only sucks in imports when it is consumption focused and we buy more stuff from abroad than we can actually pay for. Unfortunately, that is what our governments have gone for because it is popular and makes people feel better off in the short term. As GDP is measured a consumption boom can create "growth" but it will always come at a price.
We need growth driven by investment, by increased productivity as a result of that investment and better training and by more output rather than consumption.
If the threat from Trump is "I won't help you get elected next time" then they are screwed anyway.
Why not go out with some dignity?
Take his mind off these stupid tariffs
Then they can be quietly shelved while he is parachuting Navy Seals into Nuuk
It's got a much bigger trade deficit than Canada and is being led by a lunatic.
If Republicans don't stand up to Trump, they are gonna lose.
Interesting that Trump kingmaker and prolific tweeter @elonmusk has not commented on the imposition of massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico… and China …. 🧐
Here is Tesla just last week warning on the impact of tariffs on its profits and revenues…
https://x.com/faisalislam/status/1886016325333479797
While we don't emphasise it, all societies are ultimately constrained by the possible fact of violence. For a Trumpian anti constitution set up to work in the UK it would have to have not only an elected outfit but also have and keep violence on its side. That is mainly the armed forces and police + the mob.
Yes the government can ignore the Supreme court etc and just get on with it; but only if the forces of violence are on its side. For two reasons: government illegality in the end can only be enforced by state violence so it has to retain its loyalty. And what was official violence used against the government would soon overcome it.
Armed forces and police owe their allegience to the crown not the state; this matters.
If you're looking at it entirely from a US perspective, then they might say '"Who cares', but in an integrated global economy, a currency shift of that magnitude in the space of a few hours (how much did GBP move on 24th June 2016? It was a lot, but I don't think it was 25%!) will have a terrible impact on the Canadian economy and anyone Canada trade with (including the US).
They would therefore likely have to do a deal with Scottish Labour anyway to keep out Reform. Which would send some SNP voters to Alba ripping Scottish nationalism apart
My point was since they have been given the opportunity to actually do something to make Brexit at least a little less dreadful, Labour have singularly failed (so far) to grasp the nettle.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
The Labour staffers above are predicting swings in specific groups of seats. A Reform heartland emerging?
The upper house in the US is fully elected and now controlled by Trump’s party anyway
Insofar as what we have is a suboptimal settlement (and it's certainly not a disaster unless you're a committed Eurofederalist), it's at least in part because too many people on the losing side didn't actually accept that they had lost and spent years trying to reverse the loss instead of going "ok, we wouldn't have wanted to start from here but we're here now, what's the best way forward?"
That being the case, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that in government they haven't shown any ability to move forward.
Brexit is shit because it was always going to be shit.
The fact that it is shit is not the fault of those who said it would be shit all along.
You won. Suck it up.
Are you not equalising autism with sociopathy, narcissism and psychopathy? They are all neuro- divergent conditions true, but after that I think the similarity between autism and the rest stops.
Judges can enforce parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law as they did over the prorogation. The King is head of state and thankfully not a politician
SNP + Green = 66
SNP + Green + Alba = 74
https://x.com/kmacraeplockton/status/1886007886725144918?s=46&t=fJymV-V84rexmlQMLXHHJQ
https://youtu.be/_PUxiQmUPK8?si=1zKWHSyOSFR83aJv
or this,
https://youtu.be/htV3mO34gtM?si=waXp-6iClw7SG5u1
If that's your standard for evidence, I don't think I'll even waste time clicking on the second.
This time his agenda has been well planned - Project 25 might not be the entire template, but there’s an awful lot if it already being pursued - by largely non elected activists and their financial backers.
Trump is rather more than just a frontman for that agenda, but it’s quite a large part of what he is.
Indeed Davey is against the means testing of WFP, the imposition of IHT on farmers, local house building targets and the 3rd runway at Heathrow affirming he leads the NIMBY party
As for the 3rd runway confirmation by Reeves, I have no idea why she thought it was sensible when so many in her party, including Starmer, have consistently opposed it and it is not going to be operational before 2040 ish even if it even happens
And then we have Trump for the next 4 years and maybe even the Republicans winning in 2028
I have not posted as much recently as I despair at the state of politics and the world order as I only see bitter divisions [on occasions witnessed on here] for years to come and frankly concentrating on my wife, family and friends seems the best place to devote my energies
Close you eyes tight shut and put your fingers in your ears, but it doesn't change the reality of Brexit as an economic disaster. One that is probably not reversible, although things can be done by a Labour Government to make it less bad. An endeavour they have failed in spectacularly.
But then, much more interesting are artworks that have DARK Noom, remember that is the tingle of God’s absence, of something bleak, inhuman and wrong, some terrific yet ineffable sadness. Dark Noom can be found in death camps from Tuol Sleng to Trebklinka, or on the battlefields of Flanders, and across Virginia
Art with Dark Noom is a much rarer beast, vanishingly rare
I’d say
Some of the more famous works by the Young British Artists
“Die Familie Schneider”
Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets have bright AND dark noom
You could argue some of the more nihilistic examples of Drill, that vulgar, animalistic worship of violence, greed and misogyny, but I hate tainting G M Hopkins by putting Drill alongside his poetry
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/02/reform-uk-can-win-scores-of-labour-seats-in-england-and-wales-says-study
is very interesting. They are becoming a threat because the people starting to sympathise with it are not racists or extremes. It's mostly about the incompetence of all the others.
I expect Reform to continue its process of detoxifying, deTrumpifying and making it clear that it is an old fashioned 1950s centrist social democratic party + nationalist + low migration policy + firmly anti racist (sotto voce: who have eccentric members some of them extreme, uncosted Noddy economics and no core of leaders, and no actual evidence of competence).
Already all this 'Far Right wing' stuff loks very old fashioned.