I think there is going to be a major falling out across the Atlantic now. There is profound anger across the European capitals after vance's rude and confrontational speech. Even the uk right wing news has had enough.... what a fucking tragedy. What the heck is going on with the US???
Today, I learned that I can leave my house in Hampshire at 7.30am and arrive in Thurso by 11pm the same day by train. 5 trains to be precise. That's over 500 miles north. At a cost of less than £130.
That really is quite incredible.
Next, I want to see if I can fathom a route that gets me to the Orkney Islands (where I have never been, and i want to survey Scapa Flow) inside 24 hours sans car.
Sleeper train London to Inverness then trains and ferry from there. Or train to Aberdeen then ferry to Kirkwall but not sure if that one is overnight.
The Indian economy is about to be devastated by AI. It will kill all the outsourced workers - the programmers. Then it will kill their call centres. Then it will kill *anyone* who works on a screen from abroad. Then it will kill anyone who works from home, even domestically. Then it will kill 50% of white collar workers overall
That’s in the next 1-4 years
I just want to get my next predictions in, after my success with Ukraine
The question is what form will the opposition to this take.
That the ongoing and near-future deskilling, dumbing down, capital concentration, and labour market reduction have been given a name - and a two-letter name at that - may turn out to be a weakness.
Who with any humanity in them, who with a soul, isn't open to the call "Fuck AI to stay alive"?
Anyone campaigning against AI who isn't using AI is giving themselves a handicap, so it's a self-defeating proposition.
Asymmetric warfare.
How will the AI side crush those who in their opposition to it don't use AI? What specific weapons will they use?
CND didn't use nukes. Okay, CND lost, but the reason wasn't its omission to nuke up.
Maybe that's where they went wrong. If the ladies of Greenham Common had an independent nuclear deterrent, they wouldn't have been so easy to ignore.
I was hoping for a less flippant response from you. I am interested in your point of view if you think opposition to AI can't really happen in a way that gets anywhere.
Perplexity.ai (oh the irony!) tells me there are >1bn white collar workers in the world. Killing or even lumpenising half of them within the space of a few years would be a LOT of people.
I'm not trying to push optimism. Just saying there will be opposition in some form.
(On the Greenham women, a lot could be said, but they weren't easy to ignore and many have heard of them and remember them 40 years later. CND did fail, as I said, but they were still an opposition.)
Can everyone in this mini-thread stop confusing “AI” with “LLMs”?
No.
It’s harder to get an irrational panic going about Trans Gay Illegal Immigrant Alien Large Language Models.
You can no longer review the "Gulf of America" on Google maps, and they've been deleting the negative reviews they were getting.
Polling shows it consistently as one of Trump’s most unpopular policies. Like 19% approve of it. Funnily, it’s the one that bothers me least.
But is there polling on which Trump policy *bothers* people the most? I mean it doesn't bother me, but if asked if I approve or disapprove, I'd say disapprove.
But in this case he obviously hasn't got many of his own supporters on board, and I can understand why - they don't like things being renamed.
I think that Trump and Vance just seriously damaged American leadership of the West, and certainly the European part of it. I had a few beers with a friend who is a senior Estonian politician. The commentary from the MAGA crew was, to a degree predicted. What was not predicted was the naked contempt for all of the EU members and indeed also the UK. However, the economy of the Nordic Baltic 7 is basically the same size as that of Russia and the view he put forward is that in many ways the MAGA mob have just done Europe a massive favour. "We have no choice, we have to work together", There are already significant discussions as to what now needs to be done. The coordination of the JEF states: Nordic/Baltic, the Netherlands and the UK is being discussed and it seems that Poland too will probably join quite quickly. So, with large scale defence expenditure on the way, the view is that the Nordic/Baltic region will be more than capable of seeing off any Russian attack without calling on the US. The US leverage could fall surprisingly quickly.
As for wider EU-US relations, there are already significant discussions about what to do if the US is going to stab Ukraine in the back. Again the view is that if the US is attacking the EU, then the EU no longer needs to accommodate US wishes in a variety of spheres, including tech regulation and finance. The contempt that Vance expressed is not a one way street. The EU will hit back very hard if Trump attempts to hurt global trade in ways that Brussels deems unacceptable.
So, "it begins". The EU economy is larger and more integrated into global trade than the US economy. Vance´s astonishingly ill judged speech is going to blow back to Washington in ways that the MAGA people do not even begin to expect. "Its sad, but is a matter of survival, we can not allow the US to compromise our hard fought freedom on a mere whim, and we wont"
So, I think Putin and Trump are going to get a few nasty surprises in the coming weeks.
I'm pretty sure Trump 2.0 will end in an economic firestorm. He hasn't a fucking clue about the world, trade or economics. Or indeed science and technology.
He wants to drill shale like there's no tomorrow even though the world wont need to buy his shale because the caravan has moved on.
Hopefully the storm will only be in America.
lols at the thought that the eu is more integrated into world trade its a protectionist overregulated little backwater that even now is having to backpeddle on ai regulation because everyone else is laughing at them
That's not really true: the EU exports far more than the US.
Take exports to China: it sucks up roughly twice as many goods and services from the EU ($250bn) as the US ($143bn). Or the UK - again, many more imports from the EU than the US. It's only really Mexico and Canada that import a lot more from the US than the EU.
And to repeat yes it does now but its an ever declining figure, not therefore a proof of the eu empires strength
Errr: EU export performance has been pretty strong, it's domestic demand and demographics that are their real problem.
EU gdp as a percentage of world gdp has dropped year on year and now about 15% from a lot more than 20% a decade or two back
The EU’s share of world imports for goods and services was in the range of 15.2% to 15.8% between 2012 and 2018. This share subsequently increased in successive years to reach 16.5% in 2020 before dropping back to 16.1% in 2021 and then increasing in 2022 to a new peak, at 16.9%. As such, in 2022 it stood 1.6 percentage points above its share in 2012.
Of course when it included the UK its share was higher
Europe overall hasn’t done badly. It remains, including Britain and excluding Russia, the continent with the highest standard of living, highest quality of public services, best architecture, best transportation (and best cars), most beautiful cities, most diverse landscapes, lowest rates of public corruption.
It has its problems: the AfD, ageing populations, empty villages, migration choke points, slow growth, and a hideous war of conquest on its Eastern margin. But all continents have problems. North America has gun crime, Mexican drug cartels, addiction, obesity. South America has murder, drugs, Venezuela, the impossibility of doing business almost everywhere, oh and murder, and drugs. Asia has Xinjiang, the Rohinjia genocide, Gaza, dictatorships coming out of your ears, Kim Jong Un, the Taliban, and most of Russia. Africa has corruption, forgotten civil wars, Wagner, Malaria. Europe is OK. If its sclerosis, it’s generally quite a pleasant sclerosis.
A Cuban woman was given a visa to join her boyfriend in the UK despite the fact that he had died the previous year, The Times can reveal.
Ilian Velazquez arrived in the UK in March 2019 to join John Hewer on a two and a half year partner visa. It later emerged that Hewer had died in November 2018 — after she had applied for permanent settlement in the UK.
Velazquez then twice applied for indefinite leave to remain, on the basis that she was a bereaved partner. Both applications were refused, the latter in July 2022, but she has remained in the UK while appealing her case.
After her two applications to remain in the UK failed, Velazquez met a new partner, a man named Galan Zambo who is a dual South African and Hungarian national. She applied for leave to remain as his partner but this was refused on the basis that she was here illegally and that Zambo did not meet the required £18,600 salary threshold to sponsor a partner.
His own visa status was also uncertain after he failed to obtain EU settlement rights.
The couple then brought a claim that deporting Velazquez to Cuba would breach their article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects family life, arguing that they would be forced to separate. Zambo said he could not join her in Cuba because of his business in the UK, arguing that it would be impossible to financially support his children in Britain from the communist country.
So this Zambo is earning less than minimum wage in whatever he does, if anything.
And also has children in this country being funded by the rest of us.
But revealing that sub minimum wage workers can sponsor a dependent.
Why did May, Johnson, Truss and Sunk leave that in place all those years when they were supposed to be focused on this stuff?
You can no longer review the "Gulf of America" on Google maps, and they've been deleting the negative reviews they were getting.
Polling shows it consistently as one of Trump’s most unpopular policies. Like 19% approve of it. Funnily, it’s the one that bothers me least.
I rather liked the suggestion that we, the irish, the French, and the Spanish should agree to call the North Atlantic the “Gulf of Portugal” to take the piss.
I met her in her Westminster office back in 2017. Mad as a box of frogs. But not quite as bonkers as Bill Cash, whom I met a few weeks before. Not sure there are as many properly bonkers MPs around these days.
'Dominic Cummings has called on the public to vote for Reform UK at this year’s local elections in order to remove Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Conservative Party.
Writing on his Substack yesterday, the former Boris Johnson adviser implored British voters to “do regime change” and combat the “rot of elite culture, elite values and elite education over decades”.
In the 25,000-word post, Cummings laid out his plan of action as: “shove out Kemi ASAP, take over Tories, get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform.” Describing the Tories as “dead in every way,” he called on voters to “push what is falling”. “Vote Reform in all local elections,” he wrote, “and help start the avalanche” to remove Badenoch.'
I think I vaguely remember a man called “Cummings”. Wasn’t he the one with the dodgy eyes. Yesterday’s man.
It's not his dodgy eyes, it's his dodgy brain that's the problem.
We'd have forgiven him the stupid eye test if he hadn't been such a thick twat with a remarkably inflated idea of his own ego inculcated by elite culture, elite education and elite values over an IQ somewhere below the number achieved in Celsius on an unusually cold winter's day in the Antarctic.
The clue is in the linked article. 25,000 words to say that? No wonder his government achieved sod all.
"get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform"
Jeez.
He is desperate to be called in from the cold and have a meeting with Bannon so they can wargame the end of western civilisation in order to prove they were right all along and civil servants are the devil's gonads let lose on the world.
In what sense do they desire the end of western civilisation?
The Weasels are quite close to popping point, I think.
Just watched Vance's speech to the Munich security conference today.
It is well worth a listen, whatever your politics. He makes an excellent challenge to Europe. I believe strongly that we should listen to his arguments, even if he has little credibility as a messenger.
For those who haven't listened, essentially he argues that Europe's biggest threat to security is our own desire to censor certain voices and not to listen to voters who want to vote for e.g. AfD. His strongest argument is that we cannot win by pretending far right parties are not popular.
My problem with his speech, though, is the blatant hypocrisy. To have Musk at the centre of your government and to lecture others on free speech is, to put it mildly, shameless.
My other problem is that he does not make any attempt to address the other side of the argument i.e. that the reason we need to fight against misinformation is that those such as Musk are in the business of spreading it, because it is profitable.
In my view the only way that we achieve the good parts of what Vance argues for (more robust free speech) is if we ensure that the megaphones that amplify speech in our democracy (media of all sorts) are working for us not against us.
The real problem with his speech is the timing. Utterly tin eared.
Also that he told a pack of lies that he seems to have picked up from the murkier corners of TikTok or, even more embarrassingly, the Daily Telegraph.
I think we should not be too parochial about this. Pretty much the whole western world is suffering from low growth right now, it is not just our inept politicians that are struggling for the answers.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
Indeed. And we’ve also run out of road in terms of mass immigration- which has been our “go-to” for two decades
Public won’t take any more. Britain is mutinous
Mass immigration is another, largely futile attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme going. When old age pensions were introduced most recipients would live a relatively brief time, certainly in comparison with their working history. That is no longer true.
My recently departed mother in law worked at a modest level until her late 50s when she retired because her husband had already retired at 55. She lived to 89. Given the breaks when raising her children she received pension for nearly as long as she worked. Her husband left school at 14 and started work. He retired 41 years later as an electrical and mechanical engineer and then lived another 26 years before dying of Alzheimer's.
Neither of these is even remotely sustainable unless you import a lot more young worker (or marks I believe they are called) to buy into the scheme. Many in the UK may not like the other consequences of mass immigration but they may not like the alternatives either.
Worth remembering as far as pensions go that when the National Assistance Act 1948 which established the modern State Pension was passed, average male life expectency was 64.8 years. It was no accident that the pension age was set at 65.
It's also worth remembering that employers are reluctant to employ applicants over the age of 50 or so. Once an older person loses a job, it's much more likely they will for all practical purposes be viewed as unemployable. So it may boil down to a choice between paying benefits as pension or as unemployment.
Good morning, everybody.
We treat age as far too decisive, since it varies so much between individuals. This gloomy thread partly overlooks the improvements in health over time, to the point that the average 65-year-old is perfectly capable of working longer. I got another job without too much trouble after losing my seat at age 60, and have only just more or less definitely retired at 75. Certainly maintaining pensions at 65 (or even younger) makes little sense in general - rather, we should encourage people to look at their own individual conditions, with an incentive to carry on working to age 70 or so if there's little physical reason not to.
Tell that to a manual worker liek steel erector, brickie, joiner etc, they are knackered well before existing pension age. Not everybody has cushy jobs in Westminster feasting on subsidesed meals and champagne with a few hours at a desk thrown in.
This is one of the strangest things that no-one talks about. Why is the pension age the same for manual workers as for people who just sit at a desk most of the time?
I think we should not be too parochial about this. Pretty much the whole western world is suffering from low growth right now, it is not just our inept politicians that are struggling for the answers.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
Indeed. And we’ve also run out of road in terms of mass immigration- which has been our “go-to” for two decades
Public won’t take any more. Britain is mutinous
Mass immigration is another, largely futile attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme going. When old age pensions were introduced most recipients would live a relatively brief time, certainly in comparison with their working history. That is no longer true.
My recently departed mother in law worked at a modest level until her late 50s when she retired because her husband had already retired at 55. She lived to 89. Given the breaks when raising her children she received pension for nearly as long as she worked. Her husband left school at 14 and started work. He retired 41 years later as an electrical and mechanical engineer and then lived another 26 years before dying of Alzheimer's.
Neither of these is even remotely sustainable unless you import a lot more young worker (or marks I believe they are called) to buy into the scheme. Many in the UK may not like the other consequences of mass immigration but they may not like the alternatives either.
Worth remembering as far as pensions go that when the National Assistance Act 1948 which established the modern State Pension was passed, average male life expectency was 64.8 years. It was no accident that the pension age was set at 65.
It's also worth remembering that employers are reluctant to employ applicants over the age of 50 or so. Once an older person loses a job, it's much more likely they will for all practical purposes be viewed as unemployable. So it may boil down to a choice between paying benefits as pension or as unemployment.
Good morning, everybody.
We treat age as far too decisive, since it varies so much between individuals. This gloomy thread partly overlooks the improvements in health over time, to the point that the average 65-year-old is perfectly capable of working longer. I got another job without too much trouble after losing my seat at age 60, and have only just more or less definitely retired at 75. Certainly maintaining pensions at 65 (or even younger) makes little sense in general - rather, we should encourage people to look at their own individual conditions, with an incentive to carry on working to age 70 or so if there's little physical reason not to.
Tell that to a manual worker liek steel erector, brickie, joiner etc, they are knackered well before existing pension age. Not everybody has cushy jobs in Westminster feasting on subsidesed meals and champagne with a few hours at a desk thrown in.
This is one of the strangest things that no-one talks about. Why is the pension age the same for manual workers as for people who just sit at a desk most of the time?
What the government should be doing is setting up incentives such that people don't just be working full time one Friday and fully retired by Monday. You would a system that encourages people / businesses to enable people to slowly drop the number of hours and also transition to different work / roles.
I think we should not be too parochial about this. Pretty much the whole western world is suffering from low growth right now, it is not just our inept politicians that are struggling for the answers.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
Indeed. And we’ve also run out of road in terms of mass immigration- which has been our “go-to” for two decades
Public won’t take any more. Britain is mutinous
Mass immigration is another, largely futile attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme going. When old age pensions were introduced most recipients would live a relatively brief time, certainly in comparison with their working history. That is no longer true.
My recently departed mother in law worked at a modest level until her late 50s when she retired because her husband had already retired at 55. She lived to 89. Given the breaks when raising her children she received pension for nearly as long as she worked. Her husband left school at 14 and started work. He retired 41 years later as an electrical and mechanical engineer and then lived another 26 years before dying of Alzheimer's.
Neither of these is even remotely sustainable unless you import a lot more young worker (or marks I believe they are called) to buy into the scheme. Many in the UK may not like the other consequences of mass immigration but they may not like the alternatives either.
Worth remembering as far as pensions go that when the National Assistance Act 1948 which established the modern State Pension was passed, average male life expectency was 64.8 years. It was no accident that the pension age was set at 65.
It's also worth remembering that employers are reluctant to employ applicants over the age of 50 or so. Once an older person loses a job, it's much more likely they will for all practical purposes be viewed as unemployable. So it may boil down to a choice between paying benefits as pension or as unemployment.
Good morning, everybody.
We treat age as far too decisive, since it varies so much between individuals. This gloomy thread partly overlooks the improvements in health over time, to the point that the average 65-year-old is perfectly capable of working longer. I got another job without too much trouble after losing my seat at age 60, and have only just more or less definitely retired at 75. Certainly maintaining pensions at 65 (or even younger) makes little sense in general - rather, we should encourage people to look at their own individual conditions, with an incentive to carry on working to age 70 or so if there's little physical reason not to.
Tell that to a manual worker liek steel erector, brickie, joiner etc, they are knackered well before existing pension age. Not everybody has cushy jobs in Westminster feasting on subsidesed meals and champagne with a few hours at a desk thrown in.
This is one of the strangest things that no-one talks about. Why is the pension age the same for manual workers as for people who just sit at a desk most of the time?
Shhhh
Mods please delete this post. Someone influential may read it.
Today I discovered that ISO standards in English translation can be purchased from the Estonian Standards website for ~€26, or for ~€35 if you buy the 2 user license which lets you download a normal PDF rather than the horrible online browser.
For a quick look you get 24 hours online for about €3 .
AIUI we are still in step BSI / ISO so they should be the same.
(I have not bought one yet, but it seems sound ... I am after e-bike battery standards, and there are a hell of a lot of possible numbers so I need to find a list first.)
I think that Trump and Vance just seriously damaged American leadership of the West, and certainly the European part of it. I had a few beers with a friend who is a senior Estonian politician. The commentary from the MAGA crew was, to a degree predicted. What was not predicted was the naked contempt for all of the EU members and indeed also the UK. However, the economy of the Nordic Baltic 7 is basically the same size as that of Russia and the view he put forward is that in many ways the MAGA mob have just done Europe a massive favour. "We have no choice, we have to work together", There are already significant discussions as to what now needs to be done. The coordination of the JEF states: Nordic/Baltic, the Netherlands and the UK is being discussed and it seems that Poland too will probably join quite quickly. So, with large scale defence expenditure on the way, the view is that the Nordic/Baltic region will be more than capable of seeing off any Russian attack without calling on the US. The US leverage could fall surprisingly quickly.
As for wider EU-US relations, there are already significant discussions about what to do if the US is going to stab Ukraine in the back. Again the view is that if the US is attacking the EU, then the EU no longer needs to accommodate US wishes in a variety of spheres, including tech regulation and finance. The contempt that Vance expressed is not a one way street. The EU will hit back very hard if Trump attempts to hurt global trade in ways that Brussels deems unacceptable.
So, "it begins". The EU economy is larger and more integrated into global trade than the US economy. Vance´s astonishingly ill judged speech is going to blow back to Washington in ways that the MAGA people do not even begin to expect. "Its sad, but is a matter of survival, we can not allow the US to compromise our hard fought freedom on a mere whim, and we wont"
So, I think Putin and Trump are going to get a few nasty surprises in the coming weeks.
I'm pretty sure Trump 2.0 will end in an economic firestorm. He hasn't a fucking clue about the world, trade or economics. Or indeed science and technology.
He wants to drill shale like there's no tomorrow even though the world wont need to buy his shale because the caravan has moved on.
Hopefully the storm will only be in America.
lols at the thought that the eu is more integrated into world trade its a protectionist overregulated little backwater that even now is having to backpeddle on ai regulation because everyone else is laughing at them
The EU says it's the top trading partner for 80 countries and the US for only 20.
Ah the eu says......maybe not an impartial speaker, also even if true an irrelevant stat as it depends on who the the 20 are and who the 80 are....which would you choose 80 somalia's vs 20 canadas
Why don't you look up the relevant figures yourself? Or just keep on believing that the EU is a 'little backwater' in terms of world trade if it makes you happy.
I always believe what is true.....the eu is irrelevant to the world powers of us and china....you are the annoying kid brother going look at me no one cares what is says or thinks or does
They obviously aren't though. Even if you dislike the EU. Hence why Trump and the Techbros hate the EU so much. They are in effect the third regulatory superpower with a market large (and rich enough) enough to dictate standards and rules, say "non" and do so via other trade deals. They hate the fact the US has a trade deficit with the EU as it is strong enough not to be easily bullied.
Plus are/were a vital part of defence architecture - hence Trump's gripes about freeriding. Some of which are fair, some aren't, as are about divisions of capabilities and what until recently the US saw as a benefit - e.g. having such a strong military presence in Europe as forward bases. That is for now, the EU's weak point - it's a trade superpower but not a military one, having relied on the American Alliance.
Obviously this would be far more the case were the UK still a member. But the US may have just made it far more likely that either that does become the case, or de facto does by us choosing to stay in the EU's orbit over a pivot to America's. As no one is going to sign a trade deal or closer defence pact with a country that rips up such deals on a whim, and the alternative, longer term, absent huge political upheaval in Europe (in which case we all may be screwed), is closer relations with our nearest major market and those who have the most obviously similar strategic interests.
Does anyone have a plausible explanation as to why Trump has a soft spot for Starmer? 🤷♀️
To attempt a serious answer.
1.) Trump likes a winner. Starmer just won an election convincingly. And much as he has domestic troubles, as people on here are wont to point out - Trump is unlikely to be paying attention to those.
2.) Trump does, for all his endless despicable faults, have a soft spot for Britain - and thus being British PM gives you an in. You can talk about meeting the King. Discuss state dinners etc.
3.) Though he posts, he isn't as online as Musk and Vance, so probably hasn't ingested the same X-related Tommy Robinson bile as they have whereby they seem to believe Starmer has inaugurated a Britsh mujahadeen.
4.) Starmer, rightly or wrongly, is a very cautious political operator so won't have said much to publicly or privately offend him in recent times. You can imagine he's quite good at flattering without commiting to anything.
5.) He's called 'Sir' - he probably thinks that's quite impressive.
H.R.1161 - Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025 To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled.
Does anyone have a plausible explanation as to why Trump has a soft spot for Starmer? 🤷♀️
To attempt a serious answer.
1.) Trump likes a winner. Starmer just won an election convincingly. And much as he has domestic troubles, as people on here are wont to point out - Trump is unlikely to be paying attention to those.
2.) Trump does, for all his endless despicable faults, have a soft spot for Britain - and thus being British PM gives you an in. You can talk about meeting the King. Discuss state dinners etc.
3.) Though he posts, he isn't as online as Musk and Vance, so probably hasn't ingested the same X-related Tommy Robinson bile as they have whereby they seem to believe Starmer has inaugurated a Britsh mujahadeen.
4.) Starmer, rightly or wrongly, is a very cautious political operator so won't have said much to publicly or privately offend him in recent times. You can imagine he's quite good at flattering without commiting to anything.
5.) He's called 'Sir' - he probably thinks that's quite impressive.
2 and 5 are probably important. But where does Trump get feted in Britain after Theresa May fawned to him at Blenheim Palace?
There's also 6. Starmer said Israel had the right to cut off the water supply to Gaza.
The Indian economy is about to be devastated by AI. It will kill all the outsourced workers - the programmers. Then it will kill their call centres. Then it will kill *anyone* who works on a screen from abroad. Then it will kill anyone who works from home, even domestically. Then it will kill 50% of white collar workers overall
That’s in the next 1-4 years
I just want to get my next predictions in, after my success with Ukraine
The question is what form will the opposition to this take.
That the ongoing and near-future deskilling, dumbing down, capital concentration, and labour market reduction have been given a name - and a two-letter name at that - may turn out to be a weakness.
Who with any humanity in them, who with a soul, isn't open to the call "Fuck AI to stay alive"?
Anyone campaigning against AI who isn't using AI is giving themselves a handicap, so it's a self-defeating proposition.
Asymmetric warfare.
How will the AI side crush those who in their opposition to it don't use AI? What specific weapons will they use?
CND didn't use nukes. Okay, CND lost, but the reason wasn't its omission to nuke up.
Maybe that's where they went wrong. If the ladies of Greenham Common had an independent nuclear deterrent, they wouldn't have been so easy to ignore.
I was hoping for a less flippant response from you. I am interested in your point of view if you think opposition to AI can't really happen in a way that gets anywhere.
Perplexity.ai (oh the irony!) tells me there are >1bn white collar workers in the world. Killing or even lumpenising half of them within the space of a few years would be a LOT of people.
I'm not trying to push optimism. Just saying there will be opposition in some form.
(On the Greenham women, a lot could be said, but they weren't easy to ignore and many have heard of them and remember them 40 years later. CND did fail, as I said, but they were still an opposition.)
Can everyone in this mini-thread stop confusing “AI” with “LLMs”?
Those banking on an early spring in the UK should be aware I am due to return at the end of the month and a freezing March is therefore more or less guaranteed.
The Vance speech has barely registered here - Russia is irrelevant in the south west Pacific and we’ve yet to really see where Sino-American relations will go in the second Trump administration. There’s a school of thought the new detente with Putin is meant to isolate Xi and it will be interesting to see how the new administration chooses to handle Korea.
Back closer to home, few surprises in Vance’s speech as he attempts to provide some intellectual “heft” to the ideology of the new administration. Migration is an easy target but Vance’s speech won’t change a thing and whether from Chad or Columbia, Eritrea or Ecuador, Vanuatu to Venezuela, people will move to where they think life is better and at a time when economies are struggling to generate growth, closing down the Ponzi scheme of importing cheap labour seems a strange move.
I’d give Vance’s views more credence if the price of oil could be cut to $40 a barrel but too many have too much invested in high oil prices for that to happen - the same is true of the UK housing market.
To be charitable. Vance may simply be trying to get Europe to get together and pull their collective weight on defence which is understandable. I’m not sure all the nonsense about free speech is helpful and I look forward to a British Prime Minister lecturing the Americans on the absurdities of their own absolutist line on free speech, abortion and the rest.
I find it curious those who preach “America First” are only too willing to opine on the political cultures of other countries - let’s see how much of a listening Vance gets in Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang.
I think we should not be too parochial about this. Pretty much the whole western world is suffering from low growth right now, it is not just our inept politicians that are struggling for the answers.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
Indeed. And we’ve also run out of road in terms of mass immigration- which has been our “go-to” for two decades
Public won’t take any more. Britain is mutinous
Mass immigration is another, largely futile attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme going. When old age pensions were introduced most recipients would live a relatively brief time, certainly in comparison with their working history. That is no longer true.
My recently departed mother in law worked at a modest level until her late 50s when she retired because her husband had already retired at 55. She lived to 89. Given the breaks when raising her children she received pension for nearly as long as she worked. Her husband left school at 14 and started work. He retired 41 years later as an electrical and mechanical engineer and then lived another 26 years before dying of Alzheimer's.
Neither of these is even remotely sustainable unless you import a lot more young worker (or marks I believe they are called) to buy into the scheme. Many in the UK may not like the other consequences of mass immigration but they may not like the alternatives either.
Worth remembering as far as pensions go that when the National Assistance Act 1948 which established the modern State Pension was passed, average male life expectency was 64.8 years. It was no accident that the pension age was set at 65.
It's also worth remembering that employers are reluctant to employ applicants over the age of 50 or so. Once an older person loses a job, it's much more likely they will for all practical purposes be viewed as unemployable. So it may boil down to a choice between paying benefits as pension or as unemployment.
Good morning, everybody.
We treat age as far too decisive, since it varies so much between individuals. This gloomy thread partly overlooks the improvements in health over time, to the point that the average 65-year-old is perfectly capable of working longer. I got another job without too much trouble after losing my seat at age 60, and have only just more or less definitely retired at 75. Certainly maintaining pensions at 65 (or even younger) makes little sense in general - rather, we should encourage people to look at their own individual conditions, with an incentive to carry on working to age 70 or so if there's little physical reason not to.
Tell that to a manual worker liek steel erector, brickie, joiner etc, they are knackered well before existing pension age. Not everybody has cushy jobs in Westminster feasting on subsidesed meals and champagne with a few hours at a desk thrown in.
This is one of the strangest things that no-one talks about. Why is the pension age the same for manual workers as for people who just sit at a desk most of the time?
The simple reason, no? Is that it would be quite complicated to administrate? Who counts as a manual worker beyond the obvious? Do manual workers who work X number of years before going into management roles still get an earlier pension? If I work in a well paid office job until I'm 45, put money away and retrain as a chippy, do I get an early pension? If I am a roofer till 35 but own my own company and just clock in on a site to check on my team from then do I get it? Does hospitality work count? Driving?
There's obviously always been some early pensions in the public sector but that's generally because your employment history is straightforward, time served, and it's often a way of getting someone on a high pay grade to vacate a role cost-effectively when change is afoot.
I think we should not be too parochial about this. Pretty much the whole western world is suffering from low growth right now, it is not just our inept politicians that are struggling for the answers.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
Indeed. And we’ve also run out of road in terms of mass immigration- which has been our “go-to” for two decades
Public won’t take any more. Britain is mutinous
Mass immigration is another, largely futile attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme going. When old age pensions were introduced most recipients would live a relatively brief time, certainly in comparison with their working history. That is no longer true.
My recently departed mother in law worked at a modest level until her late 50s when she retired because her husband had already retired at 55. She lived to 89. Given the breaks when raising her children she received pension for nearly as long as she worked. Her husband left school at 14 and started work. He retired 41 years later as an electrical and mechanical engineer and then lived another 26 years before dying of Alzheimer's.
Neither of these is even remotely sustainable unless you import a lot more young worker (or marks I believe they are called) to buy into the scheme. Many in the UK may not like the other consequences of mass immigration but they may not like the alternatives either.
Worth remembering as far as pensions go that when the National Assistance Act 1948 which established the modern State Pension was passed, average male life expectency was 64.8 years. It was no accident that the pension age was set at 65.
It's also worth remembering that employers are reluctant to employ applicants over the age of 50 or so. Once an older person loses a job, it's much more likely they will for all practical purposes be viewed as unemployable. So it may boil down to a choice between paying benefits as pension or as unemployment.
Good morning, everybody.
We treat age as far too decisive, since it varies so much between individuals. This gloomy thread partly overlooks the improvements in health over time, to the point that the average 65-year-old is perfectly capable of working longer. I got another job without too much trouble after losing my seat at age 60, and have only just more or less definitely retired at 75. Certainly maintaining pensions at 65 (or even younger) makes little sense in general - rather, we should encourage people to look at their own individual conditions, with an incentive to carry on working to age 70 or so if there's little physical reason not to.
Tell that to a manual worker liek steel erector, brickie, joiner etc, they are knackered well before existing pension age. Not everybody has cushy jobs in Westminster feasting on subsidesed meals and champagne with a few hours at a desk thrown in.
This is one of the strangest things that no-one talks about. Why is the pension age the same for manual workers as for people who just sit at a desk most of the time?
The simple reason, no? Is that it would be quite complicated to administrate? Who counts as a manual worker beyond the obvious? Do manual workers who work X number of years before going into management roles still get an earlier pension? If I work in a well paid office job until I'm 45, put money away and retrain as a chippy, do I get an early pension? If I am a roofer till 35 but own my own company and just clock in on a site to check on my team from then do I get it? Does hospitality work count? Driving?
There's obviously always been some early pensions in the public sector but that's generally because your employment history is straightforward, time served, and it's often a way of getting someone on a high pay grade to vacate a role cost-effectively when change is afoot.
Just because something is difficult to administrate doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Of course it helps to live in a mostly honest and law-abiding society.
Does anyone have a plausible explanation as to why Trump has a soft spot for Starmer? 🤷♀️
To attempt a serious answer.
1.) Trump likes a winner. Starmer just won an election convincingly. And much as he has domestic troubles, as people on here are wont to point out - Trump is unlikely to be paying attention to those.
2.) Trump does, for all his endless despicable faults, have a soft spot for Britain - and thus being British PM gives you an in. You can talk about meeting the King. Discuss state dinners etc.
3.) Though he posts, he isn't as online as Musk and Vance, so probably hasn't ingested the same X-related Tommy Robinson bile as they have whereby they seem to believe Starmer has inaugurated a Britsh mujahadeen.
4.) Starmer, rightly or wrongly, is a very cautious political operator so won't have said much to publicly or privately offend him in recent times. You can imagine he's quite good at flattering without commiting to anything.
5.) He's called 'Sir' - he probably thinks that's quite impressive.
2 and 5 are probably important. But where does Trump get feted in Britain after Theresa May fawned to him at Blenheim Palace?
There's also 6. Starmer said Israel had the right to cut off the water supply to Gaza.
On 6.) I doubt he's even aware Starmer's said it and the PM's most recent comments were to criticise the insane Gaza-a-Lago idea.
I think we should not be too parochial about this. Pretty much the whole western world is suffering from low growth right now, it is not just our inept politicians that are struggling for the answers.
The reasons for this are complicated but clearly the overwhelming debt arising from long periods of overspending is catching up with us. We are struggling to keep demand up. We can't afford to invest for our own future, we are dependent upon the generosity of others. In addition we face a lot of challenges like a need to do something radical about our defence systems and a public sector, as we were discussing last night, that absorbs ever more funds with no additional results.
This is not just happening here. The particular problems may vary from country to country but the overall gloom is the same. I fear that our economic model, based on ever greater boosts of public spending funded by debt to get short term demand in the hope that that sparks wider growth may have run out of road.
Indeed. And we’ve also run out of road in terms of mass immigration- which has been our “go-to” for two decades
Public won’t take any more. Britain is mutinous
Mass immigration is another, largely futile attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme going. When old age pensions were introduced most recipients would live a relatively brief time, certainly in comparison with their working history. That is no longer true.
My recently departed mother in law worked at a modest level until her late 50s when she retired because her husband had already retired at 55. She lived to 89. Given the breaks when raising her children she received pension for nearly as long as she worked. Her husband left school at 14 and started work. He retired 41 years later as an electrical and mechanical engineer and then lived another 26 years before dying of Alzheimer's.
Neither of these is even remotely sustainable unless you import a lot more young worker (or marks I believe they are called) to buy into the scheme. Many in the UK may not like the other consequences of mass immigration but they may not like the alternatives either.
Worth remembering as far as pensions go that when the National Assistance Act 1948 which established the modern State Pension was passed, average male life expectency was 64.8 years. It was no accident that the pension age was set at 65.
It's also worth remembering that employers are reluctant to employ applicants over the age of 50 or so. Once an older person loses a job, it's much more likely they will for all practical purposes be viewed as unemployable. So it may boil down to a choice between paying benefits as pension or as unemployment.
Good morning, everybody.
We treat age as far too decisive, since it varies so much between individuals. This gloomy thread partly overlooks the improvements in health over time, to the point that the average 65-year-old is perfectly capable of working longer. I got another job without too much trouble after losing my seat at age 60, and have only just more or less definitely retired at 75. Certainly maintaining pensions at 65 (or even younger) makes little sense in general - rather, we should encourage people to look at their own individual conditions, with an incentive to carry on working to age 70 or so if there's little physical reason not to.
Tell that to a manual worker liek steel erector, brickie, joiner etc, they are knackered well before existing pension age. Not everybody has cushy jobs in Westminster feasting on subsidesed meals and champagne with a few hours at a desk thrown in.
This is one of the strangest things that no-one talks about. Why is the pension age the same for manual workers as for people who just sit at a desk most of the time?
The simple reason, no? Is that it would be quite complicated to administrate? Who counts as a manual worker beyond the obvious? Do manual workers who work X number of years before going into management roles still get an earlier pension? If I work in a well paid office job until I'm 45, put money away and retrain as a chippy, do I get an early pension? If I am a roofer till 35 but own my own company and just clock in on a site to check on my team from then do I get it? Does hospitality work count? Driving?
There's obviously always been some early pensions in the public sector but that's generally because your employment history is straightforward, time served, and it's often a way of getting someone on a high pay grade to vacate a role cost-effectively when change is afoot.
Just because something is difficult to administrate doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Of course it helps to live in a mostly honest and law-abiding society.
Of course. But there are a lot of things that aren't done because administratively the cost of implementing and administrating them may be more than the benefits of a more bespoke system. For example universal benefits or means testing pensions themselves so they're higher for the poorest.
To actually make such a policy work and be fair you'd need full employment histories, qualifications (which some manual workers may not have), how much you'd earned from that or other sources. An endless list of what jobs qualify and what doesn't. It'd cost a lot of money to work through - money that might be better spent on those in obvious need.
Which is not to say it couldn't be done. Just the calculation of most governments maybe to go "well generally let people sort themselves out" and then offer payments to help people who physically can't get work before pension age, or additional help after compared to those who can.
It’s all very well bleating on about immigration and when people aren’t feeling good about things, scapegoating certain groups is the stock response of the politically ambitious and feeble.
None of this will stop people trying to move from parts of the world where life remains nasty, brutish and short to those regions which, by contrast, look oases of prosperity and calm. Many are simply coming to make a better life for themselves, to work, to earn money, to have a nice place to live - so many of the things we take for granted.
No one has offered a coherent response on illegal immigration - yes, you can keep tightening the rules on legal immigration until you reach a “one in, one out” position.
What does “Fortress Europe” look like? Do we re-imagine NATO as an anti-migrant force patrolling the Mediterranean? What about a nice big wall or two?That’s where you end up if you are determined to end “migration”.
The Indian economy is about to be devastated by AI. It will kill all the outsourced workers - the programmers. Then it will kill their call centres. Then it will kill *anyone* who works on a screen from abroad. Then it will kill anyone who works from home, even domestically. Then it will kill 50% of white collar workers overall
That’s in the next 1-4 years
I just want to get my next predictions in, after my success with Ukraine
The question is what form will the opposition to this take.
That the ongoing and near-future deskilling, dumbing down, capital concentration, and labour market reduction have been given a name - and a two-letter name at that - may turn out to be a weakness.
Who with any humanity in them, who with a soul, isn't open to the call "Fuck AI to stay alive"?
Anyone campaigning against AI who isn't using AI is giving themselves a handicap, so it's a self-defeating proposition.
Asymmetric warfare.
How will the AI side crush those who in their opposition to it don't use AI? What specific weapons will they use?
CND didn't use nukes. Okay, CND lost, but the reason wasn't its omission to nuke up.
Maybe that's where they went wrong. If the ladies of Greenham Common had an independent nuclear deterrent, they wouldn't have been so easy to ignore.
I was hoping for a less flippant response from you. I am interested in your point of view if you think opposition to AI can't really happen in a way that gets anywhere.
Perplexity.ai (oh the irony!) tells me there are >1bn white collar workers in the world. Killing or even lumpenising half of them within the space of a few years would be a LOT of people.
I'm not trying to push optimism. Just saying there will be opposition in some form.
(On the Greenham women, a lot could be said, but they weren't easy to ignore and many have heard of them and remember them 40 years later. CND did fail, as I said, but they were still an opposition.)
Can everyone in this mini-thread stop confusing “AI” with “LLMs”?
Fair enough. Show me an "AI" that isn't a LLM.
I have long since given up getting picky about what is ML, what is AI, etc when people are sloppy with terminology. It just isn't worth the hassle.
"European officials in Munich were horrified at what they saw as Vance’s unfair and untrue claims, and his linking of US support to the allegations. “It was mad, totally mad,” said one senior European diplomat. “And very dangerous.” Some officials compared the speech with Vladimir Putin’s address at the same event in 2007, where the Russian president warned that Nato expansion risked conflict with Moscow. “He lectured us, he humiliated us,” said a senior EU diplomat. “The mood in the room was exactly like the Putin 2007 speech . . . it was outrageous.”"
Vance: You europeans have killed free speech. It's a fucking disgrace and is the end of days. I cannot tell you how angry I am and what a mistake this is.
US government under Trump: RFK to ban tv adverts for pharmaceuticals.
"Secret recordings reveal how London parking wardens are being pressured to issue tickets Managers ‘threaten to discipline staff who fail to issue 10 or 11 tickets a shift’"
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
It is controversial because commuting to work is expensive in both time and money. And because some companies have taken the opportunity to sell off (or end leases) on accommodation which means the office experience is even worse because hot desking is a PITA.
My team was WFH from 2012, long before the pandemic. Dimon is right that it does make it more difficult to bring new colleagues on board, both in terms of teamwork and the wider company culture (although on that latter point, many companies do not really try).
What is interesting is Dimon's complaints about people's lack of focus in Zoom meetings. Dimon is right that this is a problem. WFH attendees might say (not out loud, one hopes) that this is why their productivity is higher – that they get on with answering emails and routine paperwork while the Head of Paperclips is droning on about left-handed staples; that their lack of focus in meetings is a virtue.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably and in the post election analysis I seemed to remember it didn't show any particular issue. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
In 2015 Cameron won largely because the LibDems imploded and the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland. There was a small swing against the Conservatives in England.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
In 2015 Cameron won largely because the LibDems imploded and the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland. There was a small swing against the Conservatives in England.
But as I say, I remember there were loads of polls that stated Cameron had this huge issue among female voters, but I seemed to remember the post election analysis showed that didn't actually turn out to be turn at the ballot box.
I am not sure with Starmer making various ministers a man or a woman will make much difference, they have bet the farm on growth and house building. They would be better getting decent people to do a good job rather than worry that he sacked a crap one because they were a woman.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
In 2015 Cameron won largely because the LibDems imploded and the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland. There was a small swing against the Conservatives in England.
But as I say, I remember there were loads of polls that stated Cameron had this huge issue among female voters, but I seemed to remember the post election analysis showed that didn't actually turn out to be turn at the ballot box.
I am not sure with Starmer making various ministers a man or a woman will make much difference, they have bet the farm on growth and house building. They would be better getting decent people to do a good job rather than worry that he sacked a crap one because they were a woman.
Whether or not it should, it does matter both for media reception and party management reasons, even if voters can be cynically forgotten for the next four years.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
In 2015 Cameron won largely because the LibDems imploded and the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland. There was a small swing against the Conservatives in England.
But as I say, I remember there were loads of polls that stated Cameron had this huge issue among female voters, but I seemed to remember the post election analysis showed that didn't actually turn out to be turn at the ballot box.
I am not sure with Starmer making various ministers a man or a woman will make much difference, they have bet the farm on growth and house building. They would be better getting decent people to do a good job rather than worry that he sacked a crap one because they were a woman.
Labour still has a problem with not trusting a woman to be PM. Or even party leader.
It is controversial because commuting to work is expensive in both time and money. And because some companies have taken the opportunity to sell off (or end leases) on accommodation which means the office experience is even worse because hot desking is a PITA.
My team was WFH from 2012, long before the pandemic. Dimon is right that it does make it more difficult to bring new colleagues on board, both in terms of teamwork and the wider company culture (although on that latter point, many companies do not really try).
What is interesting is Dimon's complaints about people's lack of focus in Zoom meetings. Dimon is right that this is a problem. WFH attendees might say (not out loud, one hopes) that this is why their productivity is higher – that they get on with answering emails and routine paperwork while the Head of Paperclips is droning on about left-handed staples; that their lack of focus in meetings is a virtue.
The trick is to have your email in the middle of your zoom screen, so you're looking in the right direction.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
In 2015 Cameron won largely because the LibDems imploded and the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland. There was a small swing against the Conservatives in England.
Cameron wiped out the LibDems, because left wing LibDems voters went Labour because of the coalition, while right wing ones weren't threatened by Cameron, and quite a few voted for him.
Anybody fancy a few months in the Ukraine every year on the taxpayer?
Fortunately I believe the Russian army is a little depleted too
Russia will spend the next four years rebuilding their shattered army. Britain? Well, at least we are now advertising for recruits for all three services, though the RAF is looking for soldiers not pilots.
Anybody fancy a few months in the Ukraine every year on the taxpayer?
Fortunately I believe the Russian army is a little depleted too
Russia will spend the next four years rebuilding their shattered army. Britain? Well, at least we are now advertising for recruits for all three services, though the RAF is looking for soldiers not pilots.
To be fair, if there's one thing we've learned from Ukraine, it's that the future is UAVs.
I can't see a reason why Reform couldn't poll 34-35% in a GE. They'd probably pip Labour and with tactical voting the other way (big ifs) they could govern in coalition/C&S with the Tories.
But, Farage would need to get a credible economic offer together and a serious foreign policy to do it first.
If he's sensible, he would try to overcompensate and take a very strongly pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian stance.
Any ambiguity on his position will be attacked ruthlessly by the other three major parties if Russia is still a major concern in 4 years. And it won't be to Farage's political advantage to be perceived as such.
Reform are now in a polling position where 'being in government' is a realistic possibility. That will come with greater scrutiny over their full range of policies.
This is a category error.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
It seems every PM it is claimed has a woman problem. Brown (tick), Cameron (tick), Boris (tick), Truss (triple tick), now Starmer. I know we get polling that seems to show this, but then they can't be that against those leaders as Cameron, Boris and Starmer won easily.
Won easily by what definition? Cameron turned clear poll leads into scraping a hung parliament and needing the LibDems to prop him up. Boris benefitted from Nigel Farage standing down his candidates in Tory seats. Starmer won a landslide in seats but just one third (almost exactly) of the popular vote.
Cameron woman problem was the talk leading up to 2015 GE, which Tories won comfortably. Boris won comfortably. Yes nobody really likes Starmer, but I don't think that is gender based, he just isn't very likable.
In 2015 Cameron won largely because the LibDems imploded and the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland. There was a small swing against the Conservatives in England.
Cameron wiped out the LibDems, because left wing LibDems voters went Labour because of the coalition, while right wing ones weren't threatened by Cameron, and quite a few voted for him.
Without being unkind, not quite. You’re right about the Labour facing Liberal Democrats who were lost in May 2010. As for the others, when Cameron presented the choice as between maintaining the Union under the Conservatives and the possibility of a Labour-SNP coalition leading to the creation of an independent Scotland, the pro-union LDs ran back to the Tories.
In addition, we now know from 2012 the Conservatives ramped up activity in LD seats - Reform should take note of this, you need the longest of spoons to sup with the Conservatives.
It is controversial because commuting to work is expensive in both time and money. And because some companies have taken the opportunity to sell off (or end leases) on accommodation which means the office experience is even worse because hot desking is a PITA.
My team was WFH from 2012, long before the pandemic. Dimon is right that it does make it more difficult to bring new colleagues on board, both in terms of teamwork and the wider company culture (although on that latter point, many companies do not really try).
What is interesting is Dimon's complaints about people's lack of focus in Zoom meetings. Dimon is right that this is a problem. WFH attendees might say (not out loud, one hopes) that this is why their productivity is higher – that they get on with answering emails and routine paperwork while the Head of Paperclips is droning on about left-handed staples; that their lack of focus in meetings is a virtue.
The trick is to have your email in the middle of your zoom screen, so you're looking in the right direction.
These occasional nuggets of pure wisdom make the hours I waste on PB worth it.
Can you imagine if a British government stuck its confidential data on American servers or let the Chinese build our critical infrastructure? Oh wait, those things happened.
'Dominic Cummings has called on the public to vote for Reform UK at this year’s local elections in order to remove Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Conservative Party.
Writing on his Substack yesterday, the former Boris Johnson adviser implored British voters to “do regime change” and combat the “rot of elite culture, elite values and elite education over decades”.
In the 25,000-word post, Cummings laid out his plan of action as: “shove out Kemi ASAP, take over Tories, get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform.” Describing the Tories as “dead in every way,” he called on voters to “push what is falling”. “Vote Reform in all local elections,” he wrote, “and help start the avalanche” to remove Badenoch.'
'Dominic Cummings has called on the public to vote for Reform UK at this year’s local elections in order to remove Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Conservative Party.
Writing on his Substack yesterday, the former Boris Johnson adviser implored British voters to “do regime change” and combat the “rot of elite culture, elite values and elite education over decades”.
In the 25,000-word post, Cummings laid out his plan of action as: “shove out Kemi ASAP, take over Tories, get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform.” Describing the Tories as “dead in every way,” he called on voters to “push what is falling”. “Vote Reform in all local elections,” he wrote, “and help start the avalanche” to remove Badenoch.'
Warm and sunny next week. It’s going to feel downright weird. Could get up to 17C.
It's f*cking cold here in the North Notts hills at 600ft+.
Freezing when I went out to the shop in the early evening.
Most chilly last night in North Durham when we went out to celebrate the day of love. 🙄😫
*raises eyebrows*
Outside? In Durham? In this weather?
Makes you proud to be British.
In George Carey's book of renovation of St Nic's Durham ("The Church in the Marketplace"), there is an account of one of his new converts insisting on being baptised in the River Wear in November.
As predicted on this very PB, this is framed across the Atlantic as a threat to American national security.
And what Trump and Musk is doing is a threat to our national security.
They should sort themselves out. Until then, they can f**k right off.
Nice thought but unfortunately we need them more than they need us.
Do we?
It's probably touch and go, and walking lots of lines very carefully. We are very integrated, as we all know.
What do we do if the USA turns off all the F35s, for one extreme example? *
There are treaties and contracts, but Mr Chump has shown he does not give a damn for any of those if he thinks he needs to break them. And his Government and structures supposed to keep him check - eg Republicans in Senate and Congress - have been replaced with servile snufflebots, even where they know the actions they take will be disastrous for the USA.
* When the SDR finally comes out, imo watch for quiet trends designed to lessen dependence on the USA. Examples may be Eurofighters not F35s, or NASAMS not Patriot for longer range SAM missiles. The former is *more* European, but not I think a completely sovereign capability.
He should be tarred and feathered for backing Trump, and never let near politics again. One of the guilty men. Though there's a few on the right these days who appear to have lost their minds and any sense of decency. It makes the left's turn to Corbynism look rational and measured.
Vance: You europeans have killed free speech. It's a fucking disgrace and is the end of days. I cannot tell you how angry I am and what a mistake this is.
US government under Trump: RFK to ban tv adverts for pharmaceuticals.
Not to mention a US government banning a news organisation because it refuses to call Gulf of X the Gulf of Y.
Comments
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/02/14/jd-vance-message-simple-drink-maga-kool-aid-europe-on-own/
Funnily, it’s the one that bothers me least.
It’s harder to get an irrational panic going about Trans Gay Illegal Immigrant Alien Large Language Models.
I mean it doesn't bother me, but if asked if I approve or disapprove, I'd say disapprove.
But in this case he obviously hasn't got many of his own supporters on board, and I can understand why - they don't like things being renamed.
It has its problems: the AfD, ageing populations, empty villages, migration choke points, slow growth, and a hideous war of conquest on its Eastern margin. But all continents have problems. North America has gun crime, Mexican drug cartels, addiction, obesity. South America has murder, drugs, Venezuela, the impossibility of doing business almost everywhere, oh and murder, and drugs. Asia has Xinjiang, the Rohinjia genocide, Gaza, dictatorships coming out of your ears, Kim Jong Un, the Taliban, and most of Russia. Africa has corruption, forgotten civil wars, Wagner, Malaria. Europe is OK. If its sclerosis, it’s generally quite a pleasant sclerosis.
"Man describes being swallowed by whale"
The video is over at the BBC when a large whale swallowed him and his inflatable kayak.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly50k8zypmo
Lack of sexual attraction, or maybe just old age?
Freezing when I went out to the shop in the early evening.
Sunil Prasannan
@PrasannanS85454
·
22m
Will Vance and Trump be lecturing Putin about freedom of speech and democracy?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2025/02/14/TELEMMGLPICT000412254019_17395579673690_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=1280&imdensity=2
NRO budgets and headcounts are classified to prevent adversaries from using them to extrapolate our intelligence priorities.
Stop giving kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing access to this shit.
https://x.com/Angry_Staffer/status/1890490816965087631
Mods please delete this post. Someone influential may read it.
Today I discovered that ISO standards in English translation can be purchased from the Estonian Standards website for ~€26, or for ~€35 if you buy the 2 user license which lets you download a normal PDF rather than the horrible online browser.
For a quick look you get 24 hours online for about €3 .
AIUI we are still in step BSI / ISO so they should be the same.
Instructional video:
https://openregulatory.com/video/get-the-iso-13485-almost-for-free-how-to-buy-standards-on-the-estonian-website/
(I have not bought one yet, but it seems sound ... I am after e-bike battery standards, and there are a hell of a lot of possible numbers so I need to find a list first.)
Plus are/were a vital part of defence architecture - hence Trump's gripes about freeriding. Some of which are fair, some aren't, as are about divisions of capabilities and what until recently the US saw as a benefit - e.g. having such a strong military presence in Europe as forward bases. That is for now, the EU's weak point - it's a trade superpower but not a military one, having relied on the American Alliance.
Obviously this would be far more the case were the UK still a member. But the US may have just made it far more likely that either that does become the case, or de facto does by us choosing to stay in the EU's orbit over a pivot to America's. As no one is going to sign a trade deal or closer defence pact with a country that rips up such deals on a whim, and the alternative, longer term, absent huge political upheaval in Europe (in which case we all may be screwed), is closer relations with our nearest major market and those who have the most obviously similar strategic interests.
1.) Trump likes a winner. Starmer just won an election convincingly. And much as he has domestic troubles, as people on here are wont to point out - Trump is unlikely to be paying attention to those.
2.) Trump does, for all his endless despicable faults, have a soft spot for Britain - and thus being British PM gives you an in. You can talk about meeting the King. Discuss state dinners etc.
3.) Though he posts, he isn't as online as Musk and Vance, so probably hasn't ingested the same X-related Tommy Robinson bile as they have whereby they seem to believe Starmer has inaugurated a Britsh mujahadeen.
4.) Starmer, rightly or wrongly, is a very cautious political operator so won't have said much to publicly or privately offend him in recent times. You can imagine he's quite good at flattering without commiting to anything.
5.) He's called 'Sir' - he probably thinks that's quite impressive.
H.R.1161 - Red, White, and Blueland Act of 2025
To authorize the President to enter into negotiations to acquire Greenland and to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland”.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1161/text
There's also 6. Starmer said Israel had the right to cut off the water supply to Gaza.
Those banking on an early spring in the UK should be aware I am due to return at the end of the month and a freezing March is therefore more or less guaranteed.
The Vance speech has barely registered here - Russia is irrelevant in the south west Pacific and we’ve yet to really see where Sino-American relations will go in the second Trump administration. There’s a school of thought the new detente with Putin is meant to isolate Xi and it will be interesting to see how the new administration chooses to handle Korea.
Back closer to home, few surprises in Vance’s speech as he attempts to provide some intellectual “heft” to the ideology of the new administration. Migration is an easy target but Vance’s speech won’t change a thing and whether from Chad or Columbia, Eritrea or Ecuador, Vanuatu to Venezuela, people will move to where they think life is better and at a time when economies are struggling to generate growth, closing down the Ponzi scheme of importing cheap labour seems a strange move.
I’d give Vance’s views more credence if the price of oil could be cut to $40 a barrel but too many have too much invested in high oil prices for that to happen - the same is true of the UK housing market.
To be charitable. Vance may simply be trying to get Europe to get together and pull their collective weight on defence which is understandable. I’m not sure all the nonsense about free speech is helpful and I look forward to a British Prime Minister lecturing the Americans on the absurdities of their own absolutist line on free speech, abortion and the rest.
I find it curious those who preach “America First” are only too willing to opine on the political cultures of other countries - let’s see how much of a listening Vance gets in Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang.
There's obviously always been some early pensions in the public sector but that's generally because your employment history is straightforward, time served, and it's often a way of getting someone on a high pay grade to vacate a role cost-effectively when change is afoot.
To actually make such a policy work and be fair you'd need full employment histories, qualifications (which some manual workers may not have), how much you'd earned from that or other sources. An endless list of what jobs qualify and what doesn't. It'd cost a lot of money to work through - money that might be better spent on those in obvious need.
Which is not to say it couldn't be done. Just the calculation of most governments maybe to go "well generally let people sort themselves out" and then offer payments to help people who physically can't get work before pension age, or additional help after compared to those who can.
US vice-president lashes out at governments across Europe over migration and free speech"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jd-vance-brexit-lammy-munich-trump-b2698446.html
None of this will stop people trying to move from parts of the world where life remains nasty, brutish and short to those regions which, by contrast, look oases of prosperity and calm. Many are simply coming to make a better life for themselves, to work, to earn money, to have a nice place to live - so many of the things we take for granted.
No one has offered a coherent response on illegal immigration - yes, you can keep tightening the rules on legal immigration until you reach a “one in, one out” position.
What does “Fortress Europe” look like? Do we re-imagine NATO as an anti-migrant force patrolling the Mediterranean? What about a nice big wall or two?That’s where you end up if you are determined to end “migration”.
Then you have those who are already here…..
"European officials in Munich were horrified at what they saw as Vance’s unfair and untrue claims, and his linking of US support to the allegations. “It was mad, totally mad,” said one senior European diplomat. “And very dangerous.” Some officials compared the speech with Vladimir Putin’s address at the same event in 2007, where the Russian president warned that Nato expansion risked conflict with Moscow. “He lectured us, he humiliated us,” said a senior EU diplomat. “The mood in the room was exactly like the Putin 2007 speech . . . it was outrageous.”"
https://www.ft.com/content/b91bb954-8786-49c8-b237-e47d860f844d
Vance: You europeans have killed free speech. It's a fucking disgrace and is the end of days. I cannot tell you how angry I am and what a mistake this is.
US government under Trump: RFK to ban tv adverts for pharmaceuticals.
Managers ‘threaten to discipline staff who fail to issue 10 or 11 tickets a shift’"
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/secret-recordings-ealing-council-targets-wardens-parking-wardens-b1211166.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NsK0e0dTa8
https://x.com/stclairashley/status/1890554279749951687
https://x.com/Zigmanfreud/status/1890202488596492620
I am struggling to see why this is controversial.
Reform's policies do not matter. Reform is NOTA. Reform voters think that Britain is broken and that the old parties broke it. Reform voters think Reform at least seems to be listening and can hardly make things worse.
But the next election is four years off. There is plenty of time for Labour and Conservatives to start listening to voters and change tack accordingly.
For the Conservatives, this is easy. Either persuade Kemi to fix PMQs or get yet another new leader in for the next six months or so, and then another and then another.
For Labour, and therefore the government, things are more complicated but at least it can change the facts on the ground. Yes, it is great that Labour has grand schemes that will come to fruition in the decades to come, like Net Zero, the green industrial strategy and Heathrow's third runway, but people are hurting now. The government needs to focus on crime, especially street crime. It needs to fix NHS dentistry and GP appointments. It needs to worry less about the numbers not looking for jobs and focus instead on why active jobseekers complain they cannot find work.
The last thread talked about reshuffles. Well, maybe, but if you look at those said to be in most danger – Rachel Reeves, Lisa Nandy, Bridget Phillipson – what they have in common is they all self-identify as ladies, and Labour and in particular Starmer is already said to have a woman problem. There might be sideways moves but sackings or even demotions are less likely.
In parallels with Cameron's hegemony, Ed Miliband is IDS, pursuing his own agenda that comes from think tanks beyond the party, the green industrial revolution. Bridget Phillipson is Andrew Lansley, going far beyond what anyone expected to upend what looked to be solid institutions requiring at most a lick of paint – schools in her case, the NHS in his. Ending the maths and Latin programmes in the middle of the year seems churlish, and even if ending freedom for Goveite free schools sounds attractive to the left, many will remember Academies came from Labour itself.
My team was WFH from 2012, long before the pandemic. Dimon is right that it does make it more difficult to bring new colleagues on board, both in terms of teamwork and the wider company culture (although on that latter point, many companies do not really try).
What is interesting is Dimon's complaints about people's lack of focus in Zoom meetings. Dimon is right that this is a problem. WFH attendees might say (not out loud, one hopes) that this is why their productivity is higher – that they get on with answering emails and routine paperwork while the Head of Paperclips is droning on about left-handed staples; that their lack of focus in meetings is a virtue.
I am not sure with Starmer making various ministers a man or a woman will make much difference, they have bet the farm on growth and house building. They would be better getting decent people to do a good job rather than worry that he sacked a crap one because they were a woman.
Just the half century behind the Conservatives.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czep44jn9jyo
Anybody fancy a few months in the Ukraine every year on the taxpayer?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvn90pl5no
As predicted on this very PB, this is framed across the Atlantic as a threat to American national security.
In addition, we now know from 2012 the Conservatives ramped up activity in LD seats - Reform should take note of this, you need the longest of spoons to sup with the Conservatives.
He'll hack the centres and publish the material online for free.
Because even Hilary isn't *that* stupid.
"We are flooded in s***"
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5147040-carville-democrats-overwhelmed-flood-the-zone/
Oh, just got the irony...
Outside? In Durham? In this weather?
Makes you proud to be British.
(Yes, I did get your pun.)
They should sort themselves out. Until then, they can f**k right off.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14398311/Trump-not-betraying-Ukraine-hes-right-Europe-needs-step-turn-country-Putin-bite-BORIS-JOHNSON.html
What do we do if the USA turns off all the F35s, for one extreme example? *
There are treaties and contracts, but Mr Chump has shown he does not give a damn for any of those if he thinks he needs to break them. And his Government and structures supposed to keep him check - eg Republicans in Senate and Congress - have been replaced with servile snufflebots, even where they know the actions they take will be disastrous for the USA.
* When the SDR finally comes out, imo watch for quiet trends designed to lessen dependence on the USA. Examples may be Eurofighters not F35s, or NASAMS not Patriot for longer range SAM missiles. The former is *more* European, but not I think a completely sovereign capability.
It didn’t swallow him. The maximum size of a whale’s throat is 15 inches
It just held him in its mouth momentarily.
What he actually says is “I thought it swallowed me”
Just to show the way some in the US want to control people, and their sex lives:
"‘Ejaculating without intent’ draft bill slammed as ‘mockery of basic biological concepts’"
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/fine-law-abortion-ejaculation-ban-ohio-b2698443.html