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Why growth might not be enough for Labour – politicalbetting.com
Why growth might not be enough for Labour – politicalbetting.com
As covered in @stephenkb.bsky.social @financialtimes.com newsletter – as the Government bets on growth, a majority of the public aren't convinced economic growth benefits people like them, majorities of Reform/Green voters think growth will make no difference to them. www.ft.com/content/e2f6…
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I am off on a short break, Friday to Monday inclusive
So I expect a quiet few days in the world of politics/news in general
They are right to be cynical.
However Labour have a massive opportunity here. If they can get growth that works for all then it is all upside for them.
So I’m feeling everything is just fine.
Enjoy your break.
Enjoy your break, Mr Eagles.
I told it this joke:
I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my dad. Not wide awake screaming in terror, like his passengers.
And I was trying to get ChatGPT to explain the joke. It seemed to understand that there had been an accident. So I asked
- What caused the accident?
- Ah, I see what you're getting at! The joke doesn't go into the specifics of why the accident happened—it's more about the ironic twist of the dad’s peaceful death versus the terror of his passengers. The humor doesn't rely on the cause of the accident itself, but rather the stark contrast between the peaceful, quiet death of the dad (in his sleep, supposedly) and the chaotic, terrifying experience of his passengers.
Since it’s dark humor, it’s meant to leave some things vague and focus more on the shocking punchline. The joke’s structure relies on making an uncomfortable connection between death, driving, and the unexpected nature of the dad's passing. It’s not meant to be taken literally or too seriously—just a play on the contrast between different ways people can go out.
Does that make sense, or do you want to dive deeper into the logic of the joke?
So it doesn't really get it. It has got a lot better since ChatGPT 3, which completely failed to understand the joke
Did you hear about the potato farmer who won the nobel prize for being outstanding in his field?
ChatGPT 4 manages to explain it: Haha, that’s a classic! It’s a clever pun. The phrase "outstanding in his field" is usually a metaphor for someone excelling in their profession, but in this case, it’s taken literally—because he’s a potato farmer, so he’s literally standing out in a field of potatoes.
The joke is a great example of a play on words, and it’s lighthearted and punny. I like it! Got any more?
*using the word 'thinks' fairly loosely
You said: Knock Knock
ChatGPT said: Who’s there?
You said: Europe
ChatGPT said: Europe who?
You said: No I'm not!
ChatGPT said: Haha, that’s a good one! Classic "knock-knock" twist with the punchline that catches you off guard. You really got me with that one!
You said: Can you explain the knock knock joke?
ChatGPT said: Of course! The humor in this "knock-knock" joke comes from the play on the expectation of a usual "knock-knock" setup, where the person answering would respond to the name or word that’s given.
Here’s the breakdown:
You: "Knock knock!"
Me: "Who's there?"
You: "Europe."
Me: "Europe who?"
You: "No, I’m not! (as in, I'm not Europe, you're saying something unexpected instead of just completing the name or word)**
The punchline turns the classic "who’s there?" interaction into a surprise response, where instead of continuing with the word, you cleverly turn it into a question of misunderstanding. It’s like you're playing on the idea that I might have misunderstood your "Europe" as you saying you are Europe.
It’s a funny little twist on the classic formula!
Got any other jokes with that kind of twist?
Edit - actually I think it's more the personality of Caligula, the mental infirmity of Claudius, the intentions of Nero and the powers of Augustus.
It's an unlovely mixture.
It does seem rather absurd, for example, to ask about non-dom taxation, which is extremely complicated and involves lots of conflicting considerations - I've been studying it for a course I'm doing, and after a few hours of intense study I can see the main points, but I wouldn't expect the man on the Clapham omnibus to have a worthwhile opinion on it. There is usually a don't know option, but the person may not want to seem like an idiot by choosing it.
It's different for a question on VI, say, which asks people about a concrete action that they've probably thought about a fair amount and which they can full control, which is why VI tends to be pretty accurate a few weeks before a vote.
Who'd have thunk it?
For example
are you in favour of growth? Yes
Are you in favour of a battery factory down the road that will provide 100s of well-paid jobs. Increase house prices, rents, demand for services, leisure, more traffic and a high voltage grid connection? No.
Somewhere, someone is writing a riff on the Modern Major General about Elon, the modern prideful oligarch being due for defenestration, literal or metaphorical.
Enjoy your holiday Putting on the Ritz.
This is one of many reasons why I suspect he's not being entirely truthful.
1 Having some meaningful sustained economic growth
2 That growth being used to fund a better life for the broad swathe of the population.
Simplifying massively, the USA model does 1 not 2, the European model does 2 not 1. For a loooong time now, the UK model hasn't really done either.
People's cynicism about GDP is understandable- even when it has gone up, it's not at all clear where the money has gone.
Cough*house price inflation*cough.
It could be that there are a lot of savings, a lot of misspending to cut, employees of the state who don’t carry out their duties impartially and with an agenda.
If however they had said - we are going to spend the next nine months the analysing all the data, the spending, the projects and so on and then cut anything that’s not good for the people then they would not only scare the shit out of the rest of the world but actually more likely get a better result and more nuanced cuts and changes.
Same with Tariffs - it would make so little difference in the big picture if they had spent six months working out the best rates, targets, negotiating and not upsetting allies and neighbours.
The speed shows a bizarre egotism and that this is less about the taxpayer than about a big dick competition. Power. It’s really really stupid.
Hubris before Nemesis for the Tech Bros, but also the US as a whole.
When you only bring a hammer to a trade negotiation, it is not long before you find you have plenty of sore nails on your own side. The EU will not be cooperative on AI and tech regulation while the US is throwing 1898-style tariff wars around.
"Big Balls" will be kicked in them and Musky Baby will- I confidently predict- not achieve any of his ambitions and will intsead be for a brief period the Dominic Cummings of Washington, and then forgotten after his third major corporate bankruptcy.
The chaos will continue for months.
Far easier to get visible and agreed success over a parliamentary term than it is to get shared, good GDP growth, but has a bigger impact on wellbeing.
From the point of view of hard right ideologues, Trump has now served his purpose- he's got them into office. Now he's uncontrollable and a bit of an embarrassment. It would be awfully convenient to get rid of him.
Tesla shares are now 32% down from their peak on 17 December.
Minus another 6% today (in Usonian time).
Do we have a convincing Darth Musky, yet?
He's starting to remind me of the Evil Oligarch in the Star Trek cycle who wanted to throw all the aliens off earth, and had that base on the moon that turned into a new city to land on Mars. I can't recall the name.
So I'm not buying that as an explanation. More likely he's going to adjust the list to name all his political opponents while conveniently leaving his own and his key supporters' names off, as a further play to consolidate power in his own hands.
If he has a sudden heart attack, maybe that would be different.
One of the admirable things about Bill Gates is that he basically accepted what he was and is, and has done something useful with it.
Trump is an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing but a system which has someone elected in November still trying to get the cabinet he picked into office in mid February clearly has flaws.
"We're sacking everyone we don't like and ignoring the courts and the constitution because people voted for this and it's the Will of the People" sounds even stupider if you only start doing it a year in.
MAGAnauts, Trumpvangelicals and his Traditionalist Right Roman Catholic supporters have proven quite capable of reconciling it with their principles (whatever those may be).
Scandal alone won't remove him; it will have to be scandal used as an excuse by somebody who wants him gone.
(Hope I'm not over any lines with that.)
Pensioners are not relying on GDP growth, they have the Triple lock. They are not the only ones who see only the adverse impacts and not the benefits.
Then too there is the GDP growth from the enshittification of things like vets bills by Private Equity, where the benefits accrue to only a few, and often non-doms too, while the rest of us gets ripped off.
For growth to be seen to be a public good then there has to be public benefit, and very often there is not. Is this really a better country than it was 3 decades ago for all its supposed GDP growth? It's certainly not obviously so.
There is a disconnect between growth and the money government has to spend. This is, in part, because large parts of the media, the third sector and indeed the Labour party, persuaded people that the government was not spending enough on the likes of health because they were mean or uncaring, as opposed to the reality that the tax take from our economy is simply insufficient to meet our aspirations.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/top-1-percent-bags-over-40-trillion-new-wealth-during-past-decade-taxes-rich-reach
The average wealth per person in the top 1 percent rose by nearly $400,000 in real terms over the last decade compared to just $335 – an equivalent increase of less than nine cents a day – for a person in the bottom half.
And as others point out, one feature of modern globalisation is to close gaps gaps in wealth between nations, while widening them within nations, reversing the trend established by the Industrial Revolution.
Which would you personally prefer:
1. A third Trump term in USA
2. Another pandemic on the scale of COVID?
As you can see, I'm feeling cheery this morning!
So it's the usual squeeze on staff freezes and counting paperclips, and banning overtime and waiting list initiatives. It's pretty grim, but at least I won't be asked to do any more Saturday clinics. Streetings plans are in tatters.
I expect it's the same in prisons, courts, councils, schools, universities, armed forces etc. We are running on empty.
When interest rates were ultra low the government should have shifted 5% of university funding into training for builders, plumbers, electricians, borrowed the money to build 1-2m social sector homes themselves and just got on with it.
But imo your principle doesn't extend to Musk's attempts to dismantle the structures of democracy - and it's hard to distinguish between RFK being a blustering buffoon and Musk being a fascist.
And from real data we know that about a quarter of the rich pay about 10% tax.
Yet despite what Oxfam would have us believe, rates of absolute poverty have plummeted worldwide, over my lifetime, thanks to current trading arrangements.
When I was born, most people in the world had the living standards of a medieval peasant. In my lifetime, they’ve had the benefit of 600 years of economic development.
It is clearly not working.
But I wonder if part of the problem is that they’re American. It’s a British joke. ChatGPT is a yank, so it probably doesn’t get “irony”.
“This joke relies on a dark, unexpected twist, playing on the listener's assumptions. Here's the breakdown:
* Setup: "I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my dad." This establishes a seemingly sentimental and common wish. We expect a story about a peaceful, natural death.
* Twist: "Not wide awake screaming in terror, like his passengers." This completely subverts the expectation. It reveals that the dad died in some kind of accident (likely a plane or car crash, given the "passengers") that was anything but peaceful.
*This establishes a dark humor.
* Humor: The humor comes from the juxtaposition of:
* The desired peaceful death.
* The implied horrific death of the father and his passengers.
The joke uses misdirection. The first sentence sets up a normal scenario, and the second sentence delivers a shocking, unexpected, and morbid punchline. It's funny because it's unexpected, dark, and plays on the listener's initial assumptions about the father's death.”
And when people challenge them, even through the courts, the simple answer is 'we can't afford it.'
(They don't altogether help the credibility of their case by not cutting councillors' expense accounts, mind.)
Anyone been since the pandy?
That's why I'm not totally convinced by your reasoning.
I hesitate to suggest it to my sons, but they should emigrate. Not to America obviously!
Which is about right, though I'm not sure he appreciates that isn't in the constitution.
There are simply things that we have chosen not to afford.
I also don't see that a series of costly and disruptive reforms to local government will make things better in the short term - quite the contrary.
Along with the assumption that they give a damn about 'the people'.
I'm not sure how arrangements are being done, but I was phoned up by my Opthalmic Dept last Friday to make an appointment to have my eyes injected at an extra clinic they are laying on on next Sunday afternoon. This is for retinal fluid.
This is Sherwood Trust.
“The humor comes from the dark, unexpected twist in the punchline. Here’s a breakdown:
1. Setup Expectation:
The speaker begins by saying, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my dad.” This sounds like a typical wish for a calm, natural death, and the listener expects that his dad experienced a similarly peaceful end.
2. The Twist:
The punchline immediately subverts that expectation: “Not wide awake screaming in terror, like his passengers.” This reveals that while his dad’s own death was quiet (he died in his sleep), he was responsible for causing a situation—most likely a crash as a pilot, bus driver, or similar—where his passengers died in a very traumatic, terrifying manner.
3. Why It’s Funny (to some):
• Dark Humor: The joke uses morbid or taboo subjects (death, fatal accidents) in a surprising way.
• Irony: The idea that someone would want a “peaceful death” is turned on its head when the speaker implies that his father’s peaceful end came at the expense of his passengers’ horrifying deaths.
• Misdirection: The listener is led to believe that everything is a normal comment about a peaceful death, only to be shocked by the revelation that it involved a terrible accident affecting others.
Overall, the joke plays on the contrast between a peaceful death and a violent one, using the twist to create an unexpected, darkly humorous effect.
Even if there actually were a completed Oxbridge arc, 3 million new houses, a 3rd runway, net zero, modern trains running on time, police that solved your crimes and wrap around child care for free, all this would be obliterated by any one of: can't see a doctor when ill; grannie waits in trolley for 12 hours after long ambulance wait; can't get social care; can't get children into my nearest school; can't make ends meet after paying taxes and mortgage.
People are individuals and families and want to trust the competence of basic state systems for them.
Only an idiot denies there are some downsides to economic growth. But it takes a much worse idiot to prefer stagnation or recession.
I’ve notice that Facebook, always a platform for really terrible writing, has become absolutely infested with AI prose. It’s not improving the quality of the writing.
I’ll try your new Monkhouse joke (that’s a good one because it’s short funny and less well known)
For example, we could increase economic output by importing lots of low-wage workers. That would even improve our output per capita, given our demographic profile. But would that be a good thing for people in the UK? Moving back to a 50 hour week would also improve output...
But yes, aside from the labour supply technology is the thing that influences what most people think of as growth over the long term.
ChatGPT. I give it about 6 out of 10. I think the play is on the number and the illicit sex, nothing to do with the meaning of "no distance".
Q: Please explain why this joke is funny.
"I can still enjoy sex at 74 - I live at 75, so it's no distance."
A: This joke plays on a double meaning of the phrase "no distance."
At first, it sounds like the person is saying they still enjoy sex at the age of 74, but the reason for their enjoyment is that they live at 75 — as in, they live very close to it, so it's “no distance” to get there. This part sets up an expectation that the joke is about physical proximity.
However, the punchline turns it on its head. In a more playful or suggestive interpretation, "no distance" can imply that the person is saying they're so close to "75" (which might humorously be interpreted as referencing age or physical limitations), that getting to the act (or "distance" in the sense of exertion) is not an issue anymore, suggesting they’re still physically capable and not far off from having a good time despite their age.
So, the humor comes from the double meaning of "no distance" — both literal (living close) and figurative (being still physically capable). It's a clever play on words about age, vitality, and proximity.
“This is a play on words that works by deliberately confusing two different meanings:
"74" is first interpreted as an age
But then it's revealed to be a house/street number
The humor comes from subverting the initial expectation - what seems like a comment about maintaining sexual activity at an advanced age turns out to be a joke about physical proximity between addresses. It's an example of a misdirection joke, where the punchline forces the listener to reinterpret the setup in an unexpected way.”
Interviewer: “Donald Trump said on his first day he’s going to be a dictator”
Trump supporter: “I like that!…This country needs a dictator. I hate to say it, but this is the truth.”
@RpsAgainstTrump
https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1889141168924954822
Anyone who thinks an argument like that won't be tried hasn't met the USA legal system. And of course in law, every big decision by the highest court generates the next big question to be decided.
The other morning I noticed my own ribs. Pleasing to see old friends