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Why Amanda Spielman Deserves her Peerage – politicalbetting.com

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  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,561
    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of bringing industries back on shore, tariffs are a very inefficient way of doing it.

    Why?

    Because how can you, as a business owner be sure that the tariff policy will continue? If you build a factory to make MAGA hats, and then the tariffs come down, then you are really stuffed, because you've spent all this money on a factory and it can't compete.

    Which is why most industrial support in countries like China is via subsidised finance. You want to build a $100m factory, well the government will set you up with one of the State supported banks, who'll lend you $95m for 20 years at 3%.

    That funding - which is what the Germans did in East Germany too - is much more effective at stimulating a domestic manufacturing industry because your loan is set in stone for the next 20 years. It's not like a tariff which might get pulled if the President cuts a deal with the Vietnamese government, or if a new administration gets in with different priorities.

    You make a strong case for a constitutional amendment against free trade.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,328
    Cookie said:

    Roger said:

    Cookie said:

    It's feeling a bit like post-2016 Alasatir Meeks this morning on here with his regular articles entitled - and I paraphrase only slightly - 'leavers are dreadful oiks, barely human, and I simply loathe them'.

    Well it's passed the test of time pretty well.
    *Sigh*
    Look, Roger, I like you. I suspect I'd like you if I met you in real life. I value your place on this board. Please bear all this mind when I say this:I fear you haven't learned anything at all about your fellow countrymen in the past 8 years. You can't simply say everyone you disagree with are idiots. No doubt some leavers are idiots, but that is equally true of some remainers. You just need to remember that some voters have different priorities or make different assessments than you do.

    Trump is not Brexit, and the issues are very different but what they have in common is a blank incomprehension on the part of one set of voters about the other. We'd do well to try to bridge that gap. I don't believe all Trump voters are idiots. The article I linked to earlier is, I think, a good start.
    Guilty...... Hypothetically if Burnham started a movement to make Manchester break free of the UK and he found followers -as he would- I would feel your home town had lost their marbles.

    I feel the same towards those who voted leave. I would welcome an alternative explanation that didn't contain any element of racism. The proof of the mistake there for every honest leaver to see
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,405

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid
    It may or may not work, but it isn't especially stupid. The US is not the UK. The relatively low cost of energy and the relative flexibility of the labour market means its not beyond the bounds of possibility that textile manufacturing could be on-shored to some degree.
    It’s harder to see what the advantage is in on-shoring cheap textile production.
    Nike trainers aren't particularly cheap afaicr.
    But the production side might well be. I actually don't know, but for instance the production side of expensive perfumes is very cheap (which I do know) and I suspect the production costs of Nike are not too dissimilar to other brands. The higher cost element will come in elsewhere in the chain. It is the reason these good are made in low cost production countries.

    Re the @Malmesbury link to the T shirt article. You might want to try again because it isn't paywalled, at least not for me, and I don't have any subscriptions. Maybe a glitch.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 29,882
    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of bringing industries back on shore, tariffs are a very inefficient way of doing it.

    Why?

    Because how can you, as a business owner be sure that the tariff policy will continue? If you build a factory to make MAGA hats, and then the tariffs come down, then you are really stuffed, because you've spent all this money on a factory and it can't compete.

    Which is why most industrial support in countries like China is via subsidised finance. You want to build a $100m factory, well the government will set you up with one of the State supported banks, who'll lend you $95m for 20 years at 3%.

    That funding - which is what the Germans did in East Germany too - is much more effective at stimulating a domestic manufacturing industry because your loan is set in stone for the next 20 years. It's not like a tariff which might get pulled if the President cuts a deal with the Vietnamese government, or if a new administration gets in with different priorities.

    The Chips Act with its hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for American onshoring and development is far more effective (and just as hostile to foreign competitors like, say, Britain). It is what Trump would do if the hated Biden regime had not got there first.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,619

    HYUFD said:

    Most Lords have achieved success in business, law, academia, the media, science, sport, culture, education, religion, politics etc. Even if the success of some like Spielman is debatable.

    Having an appointed second chamber also often leads to better debates focused on the facts not point scoring as is often the case in the elected Commons. Focused on revising not making legislation

    No they haven't. Buying former Prime Ministers lunch, lending them the keys to a holiday home, or in other cases running rabid right wing think tanks would get the gig.
    An exaggeration. 'The Lords membership includes 'four presidents of the Supreme Court, including the current president, Lord Reed of Allermuir (Robert Reed), three deputy presidents of the Supreme Court, seven justices of the Supreme Court, five chief justices of England and Wales. There are also two former and one current attorney general for England and Wales, three former solicitors general for England and Wales, and five former and one current advocate general for Scotland.

    Nineteen have been, or are currently, vice chancellors of universities or serving in similar senior executive positions in the UK and internationally.

    The House’s membership also includes former presidents of the Royal Society, the British Academy, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal College of Nursing, as well as the current Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees of Ludlow (Martin Rees). Lord Vallance of Balham (Patrick Vallance).

    Five members are BAFTA award recipients. Members have also held senior leadership roles at broadcasting corporations, including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Six members have edited national newspapers or news magazines.

    There are three Olympic and two Paralympic athletes in the current membership.

    Six members served as EU commissioners, including Baroness Ashton of Upholland (Catherine Ashton) as the first EU high representative for foreign affairs.

    The membership also includes:one secretary-general of NATO, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (George Robertson)
    a UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Baroness Amos (Valerie Amos)
    one secretary-general of the Commonwealth, Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Patricia Scotland).

    Three former directors-general of the security service (MI5) sit in the House, with three former national security advisers, and five former heads of the home civil service.

    Thirteen members have served as permanent secretaries of government departments, four of whom were also head of the diplomatic service. Fourteen members have served internationally as UK ambassadors or high commissioners.'

    https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/house-of-lords-backgrounds-in-public-life/
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,619
    DavidL said:

    Can't help feeling that the HoL is an ever more useless and pointless institution that we really need to get rid of. Does Spielman's appointment change that, even at the margins? Not really. She is indeed pretty typical of the non entities that fill the benches there to so little purpose. Labour missed a trick with their petty attack at the hereditaries, they should have been much bolder. But then, that's really Starmer all over, isn't it?

    On current trends an elected upper house would likely have Reform with most seats in it
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 29,882

    Pulpstar said:

    MattW said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Mark Carney compares Trumpski torching the US economy to Brexit

    https://x.com/liberal_party/status/1908643764304044132

    The least surprising comment in all this chaos

    In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
    How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.

    The art of the deal.
    Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided

    And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
    "He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
    So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
    One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
    So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.

    Let’s see what happens.

    I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
    As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?

    The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
    Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.

    I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.

    We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
    If 80-90% don't want it I'd have thought it wouldn't sell ?
    You won’t be allowed to know it’s there.
    Of course you will.

    British chicken has union flags on the packaging and would be cheaper.

    So who is going to buy chicken which is lower quality, more expensive and imported ?
    The US in negotiations has explicitly criticised what they call “unjustified” labelling: https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/why-labels-wont-protect-uk-food-standards-from-a-us-trade-deal-ahUlA9H2YOWw
    They can criticize what they want but the UK government isn't going to make it illegal for UK supermarkets to put union flags or the world 'British' on UK produce.

    Nor does that deal with the fundamental fact that US food tends to cost more.
    Has much changed from the days of the horse meat scandal where when the shit hit the fan the only supermarket in the UK who could actually trace their meat supplies was Morrisons (and now they are owned by US private equity who are asset stripping, so i doubt that is true). And the reality of even big brands was very messy where the meat in your frozen meal came from e.g. a Romanian meat processing place that mixed horse and beef of questinable origins very casually

    That all been said it is always about the chlorinated chicken, but nobody seems bothered that Iceland stuff mostly comes from places like Thailand and lots of supermarket meat is cheap Brazilian, neither of which if we are honest is going to be top quality. That how Iceland does meals for a pennies.
    I vaguely knew someone imprisoned for selling condemned meat back into the human food chain. He'd been caught not by the police or government inspectors but by his commercial rivals when they looked into how he was undercutting their prices.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 14,736
    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    Taking of rich and poor countries it’s interesting gauging where Mexico sits on that spectrum from early impressions (though capital cities are never wholly representative).

    Here’s the checklist

    - can you drink the tap water: maybe
    - Taxi touts at airport arrivals: a few, but fairly orderly
    - Risk of travellers diarrhoea: yes
    - Shanty towns: no
    - city air smells of unfiltered vehicle fumes: no
    - homeless children: no
    - source of undocumented migrants: yes
    - average age of cars over 10 years: marginal
    - taxis only take cash: no
    - Cash is crumpled and dog-eared: tba
    - random dangerous looking cables slung between houses: yes

    Overall giving very middle income vibes. Around Turkey level, below Greece but above Morocco.

    Have you come across the sword fire swallowers who are scattered around road junctions? Apparantly their life expectancy is mid thirties. Though one of my favourite capitals it has extremely poor and extremely rich living in very close proximity which makes it third world. You'll see armed guards outside the haciendas and peope living on pavements opposite. Having said that their use of colour is spectacular and the zoo if it's still there is wonderful. Are the VW's still everywhere?

    PS. If you get the chance the bull fights using horses are spectacular.
    All the cars seem to be Japanese hybrids.
    Taxis with the passenger seat missing. It was 20 years ago
    Looks like GDP per capita has almost doubled in 20 years. It’s around 14k, a little above China and similar to Russia and Turkey (though it’s behind those on PPP numbers).
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,405
    MattW said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid
    It may or may not work, but it isn't especially stupid. The US is not the UK. The relatively low cost of energy and the relative flexibility of the labour market means its not beyond the bounds of possibility that textile manufacturing could be on-shored to some degree.
    That asks the question as to why they left in the first place.
    It is fairly basic economics isn't it. You only outsource because it is cheaper. If you put a tariff on it, it isn't, and (assuming you can rely on the tariff staying) if you build a factory locally it is still more expensive than the pre-tariff price (otherwise you would have done that in the first place), it is just that it is lower than the post tariff price, so whatever the price goes up.

    In addition by outsourcing you have stimulated an economy elsewhere who will now grow and spend in the rest of the world, which stimulates economies elsewhere, which benefits the whole world.

    Isolationism creates less growth than globalisation.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 23,996
    isam said:

    "The best place to watch the drama of Britain’s fastest changing postcode is next to Rainham’s 12th-century Norman church. At quarter past six, a tube-carriage haul of glum commuters is dumped at the station, where Essex meets the London sprawl. The final slog home is a curious walk of shame: past the gated Georgian pomp of Rainham Hall, and a sign for the Prawn Hub takeaway, mocked up in glaringly familiar colours. Barrack rows of new builds await them, following the pylons out to the desolate Rainham Marsh, where once upon a time, the Britain of the Nineties dreamt of building its own Disneyland.

    What’s it like living here? I ask two men skulking off to the pub through the graveyard, past a pair of Lithuanian builders drinking cans. “It used to feel like a lovely English village,” says one. “Now it’s a fucking shithole and I can’t wait to get out.”"

    https://unherd.com/2025/04/reform-is-coming-for-dagenham/

    Good article, and quite frightening for Labour. I don't know if Reform will win (we are too far out) but it's easy to see a scenario where they do. See also

    https://unherd.com/2025/03/reform-wont-save-britain/

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,790
    Sean_F said:

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.

    The good news for Vance is that Trump will increase absolute poverty

    The bad news...
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,385
    Roger said:

    Cookie said:

    Roger said:

    Cookie said:

    It's feeling a bit like post-2016 Alasatir Meeks this morning on here with his regular articles entitled - and I paraphrase only slightly - 'leavers are dreadful oiks, barely human, and I simply loathe them'.

    Well it's passed the test of time pretty well.
    *Sigh*
    Look, Roger, I like you. I suspect I'd like you if I met you in real life. I value your place on this board. Please bear all this mind when I say this:I fear you haven't learned anything at all about your fellow countrymen in the past 8 years. You can't simply say everyone you disagree with are idiots. No doubt some leavers are idiots, but that is equally true of some remainers. You just need to remember that some voters have different priorities or make different assessments than you do.

    Trump is not Brexit, and the issues are very different but what they have in common is a blank incomprehension on the part of one set of voters about the other. We'd do well to try to bridge that gap. I don't believe all Trump voters are idiots. The article I linked to earlier is, I think, a good start.
    Guilty...... Hypothetically if Burnham started a movement to make Manchester break free of the UK and he found followers -as he would- I would feel your home town had lost their marbles.

    I feel the same towards those who voted leave. I would welcome an alternative explanation that didn't contain any element of racism. The proof of the mistake there for every honest leaver to see
    Roger said:

    Cookie said:

    Roger said:

    Cookie said:

    It's feeling a bit like post-2016 Alasatir Meeks this morning on here with his regular articles entitled - and I paraphrase only slightly - 'leavers are dreadful oiks, barely human, and I simply loathe them'.

    Well it's passed the test of time pretty well.
    *Sigh*
    Look, Roger, I like you. I suspect I'd like you if I met you in real life. I value your place on this board. Please bear all this mind when I say this:I fear you haven't learned anything at all about your fellow countrymen in the past 8 years. You can't simply say everyone you disagree with are idiots. No doubt some leavers are idiots, but that is equally true of some remainers. You just need to remember that some voters have different priorities or make different assessments than you do.

    Trump is not Brexit, and the issues are very different but what they have in common is a blank incomprehension on the part of one set of voters about the other. We'd do well to try to bridge that gap. I don't believe all Trump voters are idiots. The article I linked to earlier is, I think, a good start.
    Guilty...... Hypothetically if Burnham started a movement to make Manchester break free of the UK and he found followers -as he would- I would feel your home town had lost their marbles.

    I feel the same towards those who voted leave. I would welcome an alternative explanation that didn't contain any element of racism. The proof of the mistake there for every honest leaver to see
    Those who know only their own side of the argument know not the half of it.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 12,405
    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    Liked but also wanted to post that I liked, because I really liked.

    As I mentioned earlier isolationism is very bad, not just for the country doing it, but for the rest of the world
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 29,882
    kjh said:

    Sean_F said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid
    It may or may not work, but it isn't especially stupid. The US is not the UK. The relatively low cost of energy and the relative flexibility of the labour market means its not beyond the bounds of possibility that textile manufacturing could be on-shored to some degree.
    It’s harder to see what the advantage is in on-shoring cheap textile production.
    Nike trainers aren't particularly cheap afaicr.
    But the production side might well be. I actually don't know, but for instance the production side of expensive perfumes is very cheap (which I do know) and I suspect the production costs of Nike are not too dissimilar to other brands. The higher cost element will come in elsewhere in the chain. It is the reason these good are made in low cost production countries.

    Re the @Malmesbury link to the T shirt article. You might want to try again because it isn't paywalled, at least not for me, and I don't have any subscriptions. Maybe a glitch.
    Branding undermines (or perhaps bypasses is a better term) classical free market capitalism. It means perfume and athletic shoes are no longer fungible and thus susceptible to price competition, and allows brand-owners to cream off "excess" profits.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,561
    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    How much of the credit for that do you think should go to the CCP?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 53,918

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid
    It may or may not work, but it isn't especially stupid. The US is not the UK. The relatively low cost of energy and the relative flexibility of the labour market means its not beyond the bounds of possibility that textile manufacturing could be on-shored to some degree.
    Various people have tried, here and in the US.

    Minimum price for making a T-shirt in the U.K. seems to be around £25. Which will buy you a pack of 5 T-shirts of equivalent quality on Amazon.

    No tariff wall will reduce that. The most that could be done would be to raise the price of T-shirts to a floor of £25.

    Are you up for all clothing prices to be somewhere between 3-5x what they are now, for cheap, mass produced stuff?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,790
    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,619
    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    But for the white working and lower middle class not just in the US but across the western world they have seen a reduction in manufacturing jobs due to cheap imports from developing countries, especially China as well as AI. Plus more immigrants competing for jobs and services with them as well as leading to cultural change.

    So while globalisation has increased the prosperity of the developing world and still been good for the graduate, high earning professional and executive class in the developed world for those lower down the chain it has not been as good, hence the rise of nationalist and protectionist parties
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,385

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    How much of the credit for that do you think should go to the CCP?
    From 1967 to 1980, none whatsoever. After 1980, quite a lot, but also a lot to the governments of India and Indonesia, which started to pursue sane economic policies. Also, to Gorbachev, and the USA for dismantling the USSR, and trade liberalisation, respectively
  • TimSTimS Posts: 14,736
    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    My prediction is that the man who likes to dominate each day’s headlines will shortly move on to something domestic against his political enemies.

    He’s done Ukraine for a bit then seems to have got bored, he did a load of deportations which grabbed the headlines for a few days, he’s done cutting USAID and raising tariffs, so it’s probably time for something constitutional or electoral.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,385
    HYUFD said:

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    But for the white working and lower middle class not just in the US but across the western world they have seen a reduction in manufacturing jobs due to cheap imports from developing countries, especially China as well as AI. Plus more immigrants competing for jobs and services with them as well as leading to cultural change.

    So while globalisation has increased the prosperity of the developing world and still been good for the graduate, high earning professional and executive class in the developed world for those lower down the chain it has not been as good, hence the rise of nationalist and protectionist parties
    Life was not better for working class people in 1967 than it is today.

    Many manufacturing jobs (and jobs in coal mining), were dangerous and nasty.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 76,113
    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of bringing industries back on shore, tariffs are a very inefficient way of doing it.

    Why?

    Because how can you, as a business owner be sure that the tariff policy will continue? If you build a factory to make MAGA hats, and then the tariffs come down, then you are really stuffed, because you've spent all this money on a factory and it can't compete.

    Which is why most industrial support in countries like China is via subsidised finance. You want to build a $100m factory, well the government will set you up with one of the State supported banks, who'll lend you $95m for 20 years at 3%.

    That funding - which is what the Germans did in East Germany too - is much more effective at stimulating a domestic manufacturing industry because your loan is set in stone for the next 20 years. It's not like a tariff which might get pulled if the President cuts a deal with the Vietnamese government, or if a new administration gets in with different priorities.

    So the Biden administration was thinking along the right lines ?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295

    Pulpstar said:

    MattW said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Mark Carney compares Trumpski torching the US economy to Brexit

    https://x.com/liberal_party/status/1908643764304044132

    The least surprising comment in all this chaos

    In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
    How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.

    The art of the deal.
    Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided

    And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
    "He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
    So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
    One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
    So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.

    Let’s see what happens.

    I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
    As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?

    The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
    Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.

    I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.

    We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
    If 80-90% don't want it I'd have thought it wouldn't sell ?
    You won’t be allowed to know it’s there.
    Of course you will.

    British chicken has union flags on the packaging and would be cheaper.

    So who is going to buy chicken which is lower quality, more expensive and imported ?
    The US in negotiations has explicitly criticised what they call “unjustified” labelling: https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/why-labels-wont-protect-uk-food-standards-from-a-us-trade-deal-ahUlA9H2YOWw
    They can criticize what they want but the UK government isn't going to make it illegal for UK supermarkets to put union flags or the world 'British' on UK produce.

    Nor does that deal with the fundamental fact that US food tends to cost more.
    Has much changed from the days of the horse meat scandal where when the shit hit the fan the only supermarket in the UK who could actually trace their meat supplies was Morrisons (and now they are owned by US private equity who are asset stripping, so i doubt that is true). And the reality of even big brands was very messy where the meat in your frozen meal came from e.g. a Romanian meat processing place that mixed horse and beef of questinable origins very casually

    That all been said it is always about the chlorinated chicken, but nobody seems bothered that Iceland stuff mostly comes from places like Thailand and lots of supermarket meat is cheap Brazilian, neither of which if we are honest is going to be top quality. That how Iceland does meals for a pennies.
    I vaguely knew someone imprisoned for selling condemned meat back into the human food chain. He'd been caught not by the police or government inspectors but by his commercial rivals when they looked into how he was undercutting their prices.
    It's not new. There was a big case near Newark 25 years ago. They had made about £2.5m,

    Five men who passed off hundreds of tonnes of condemned meat as fit for human consumption have been jailed for a total of 26 years and nine months.

    In the multi-million pound fraud, the men repackaged pet food-grade poultry and sold it on to supermarkets and food outlets across Britain, a jury at Hull Crown Court heard.


    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1082620.stm
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    BYD has released a video of its new Yangwang U7 EV that can quickly raise itself on the road in a fraction of a second to avoid obstacles, parallel park in place, and more.

    https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1908749512195137587

    I am just back from Asia, saw lots of BYDs, not so many Teslas.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
  • No_Offence_AlanNo_Offence_Alan Posts: 4,924

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    I wonder if those people who want the low value added manufacturing are willing to become the low paid workers required.

    Perhaps a Labor secretary might more sensibly suggest that the US workforce is upskilled so that they can do high value manufacturing for high pay.
    Isn't at least one US state trying to expand the work that minors can legally do?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6
    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 4,984
    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    I expect the China tariffs will be rolled back as some agreement is made in which Trump can spin it as a huge biggly win . I think the markets as bad as they’ve been expect some deal . If I’m wrong and the China tariffs come in then I expect the markets to go into a complete meltdown .
  • eekeek Posts: 29,588
    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of bringing industries back on shore, tariffs are a very inefficient way of doing it.

    Why?

    Because how can you, as a business owner be sure that the tariff policy will continue? If you build a factory to make MAGA hats, and then the tariffs come down, then you are really stuffed, because you've spent all this money on a factory and it can't compete.

    Which is why most industrial support in countries like China is via subsidised finance. You want to build a $100m factory, well the government will set you up with one of the State supported banks, who'll lend you $95m for 20 years at 3%.

    That funding - which is what the Germans did in East Germany too - is much more effective at stimulating a domestic manufacturing industry because your loan is set in stone for the next 20 years. It's not like a tariff which might get pulled if the President cuts a deal with the Vietnamese government, or if a new administration gets in with different priorities.

    So the Biden administration was thinking along the right lines ?
    Yep - the thing you have to remember is that Trump and everyone he is taking advice from is a f***ing idiot...
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 30,544

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    TimS said:

    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    Taking of rich and poor countries it’s interesting gauging where Mexico sits on that spectrum from early impressions (though capital cities are never wholly representative).

    Here’s the checklist

    - can you drink the tap water: maybe
    - Taxi touts at airport arrivals: a few, but fairly orderly
    - Risk of travellers diarrhoea: yes
    - Shanty towns: no
    - city air smells of unfiltered vehicle fumes: no
    - homeless children: no
    - source of undocumented migrants: yes
    - average age of cars over 10 years: marginal
    - taxis only take cash: no
    - Cash is crumpled and dog-eared: tba
    - random dangerous looking cables slung between houses: yes

    Overall giving very middle income vibes. Around Turkey level, below Greece but above Morocco.

    Have you come across the sword fire swallowers who are scattered around road junctions? Apparantly their life expectancy is mid thirties. Though one of my favourite capitals it has extremely poor and extremely rich living in very close proximity which makes it third world. You'll see armed guards outside the haciendas and peope living on pavements opposite. Having said that their use of colour is spectacular and the zoo if it's still there is wonderful. Are the VW's still everywhere?

    PS. If you get the chance the bull fights using horses are spectacular.
    All the cars seem to be Japanese hybrids.
    Taxis with the passenger seat missing. It was 20 years ago
    Looks like GDP per capita has almost doubled in 20 years. It’s around 14k, a little above China and similar to Russia and Turkey (though it’s behind those on PPP numbers).
    That I think is one of the Roman Candles in Trump's backside, waiting to explode.

    His head is stuck in 197x, and his international politics head in 1950 or 1960.

    He is not familiar with most of his poverty-stricken-waiting-to-be-exploited-by-Uncle-Sam victims now have a good deal of agency.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 65,217
    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 30,544
    Seen a couple of Kemi clips from the morning media rounds. She was good.

    Camilla Tominey likes her so a fairly easy ride. But Tominey did try to get her on how much better Jenrick was than her, to which Kemi gave quite an authentic sounding answer about teamwork and how he was doing great, along with other Shadow Cabinet members.

    Did pretty well on Trevor Phillips also.

    I have noticed she literally shakes in these interviews. Quite noticeable when she's using her hands.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,619
    nico67 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    I expect the China tariffs will be rolled back as some agreement is made in which Trump can spin it as a huge biggly win . I think the markets as bad as they’ve been expect some deal . If I’m wrong and the China tariffs come in then I expect the markets to go into a complete meltdown .
    Even Biden had tariffs on Chinese imports, the expanded tariffs are definitely coming in
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 126,619
    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    But for the white working and lower middle class not just in the US but across the western world they have seen a reduction in manufacturing jobs due to cheap imports from developing countries, especially China as well as AI. Plus more immigrants competing for jobs and services with them as well as leading to cultural change.

    So while globalisation has increased the prosperity of the developing world and still been good for the graduate, high earning professional and executive class in the developed world for those lower down the chain it has not been as good, hence the rise of nationalist and protectionist parties
    Life was not better for working class people in 1967 than it is today.

    Many manufacturing jobs (and jobs in coal mining), were dangerous and nasty.
    Yet often better paid than warehouse or delivery work many now do instead and more permanent
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 65,217

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    That's the bit that's scary. If UK diplomats hadn't got involved who knows how long she would have been there.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 20,013

    BYD has released a video of its new Yangwang U7 EV that can quickly raise itself on the road in a fraction of a second to avoid obstacles, parallel park in place, and more.

    https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1908749512195137587

    I am just back from Asia, saw lots of BYDs, not so many Teslas.

    Pretty impressive. However how is it doing those side to side movements? Locking the front brakes and skidding the back wheels?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    That's the bit that's scary. If UK diplomats hadn't got involved who knows how long she would have been there.
    Having watched a load of Peter Santenello videos, it appears that the numbers of migrants coming across from Canada have caused huge strain on the whole system. Its been an organised route for people from places like India to fly into Canada on a tourist visa and then immediately cross into the US illegally and if caught claim asylum. Its totally overrun the authorities ability to calmly deal with individual cases.

    That all been said if you looked at this girls case, as I say not shocked they would say you have to go home, but you would have thought this is an easy case, taken straight to Seattle airport, off you go.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 3,233
    Off topic, but cheering: Mommy just became a mommy -- at 97: "A rare Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoise who is estimated to be 97 has become the oldest known first-time mother of her species, according to officials at Philadelphia Zoo.

    Mommy, who has lived most of her life at the Pennsylvania institution, and Abrazzo, a roughly 96-year-old of the same reptilian stripe, are the new parents to four hatchlings. The newborns bumped the population of Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoises in U.S. facilities to 48."
    source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2025/04/03/tortoise-mommy-hatchlings-philadelphia-zoo/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galápagos_tortoise

    I think our news critters give less coverage than they ought to our environmental successes.

  • No_Offence_AlanNo_Offence_Alan Posts: 4,924

    kle4 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    MattW said:

    Roger said:

    Nigelb said:

    vik said:

    vik said:

    I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.

    He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnX1SQfgJI

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.

    ....

    Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.

    According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.


    https://www.thedailybeast.com/msnbc-host-stephanie-ruhle-alleges-trumps-treasury-sec-looking-for-an-exit-door/
    https://x.com/SRuhle/status/1908250911769506289

    NEW:
    Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT.
    In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed-
    A senior official inside the administration telling me.
    “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet.
    Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset.
    The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
    I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.

    The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
    How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ?
    No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
    Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
    I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
    It may be quicker than you think.

    Mr Trump burnt down the USA's international accumulated political capital in a fortnight, burnt down his relationships with allies of a century in a month, and has gone a long way to destroying democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself in about 6-8 weeks.

    Now he's well on the way to killing their science base, and has perhaps hard wired in a recession beyond the 1930s.

    We'll see. Needs must and the devil drives.
    Will it be faster than Nintendo...

    https://bsky.app/profile/joxley.jmoxley.co.uk/post/3lm3322qiuc2y
    Not really related but a reply on that thread about people expecting too much evidence due to tv (the csi effect) and a common follow up.

    also the idea that circumstance evidence = weak evidence. No! A strong chain of circumstantial evidence is about as strong as you can get for e.g. murder short of discovering the perpetrator either in the act or in the possession of a collection of trophies and a detailed diary.
    On juries, we have the specific problem that academic research into how our juries reach their decisions is effectively illegal. What is said in the jury room stays in the jury room, by law.
    That is not a bug (problem) it is a feature. You only get honest actions/decisions when they are anonymous.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 10,009

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    I wonder how independent the civil service is when setting travel advice. Can Lammy lean on the FO to take into account geo-political considerations? I guess he wouldn't because it would be a disaster if leaked.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6

    BYD has released a video of its new Yangwang U7 EV that can quickly raise itself on the road in a fraction of a second to avoid obstacles, parallel park in place, and more.

    https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1908749512195137587

    I am just back from Asia, saw lots of BYDs, not so many Teslas.

    Pretty impressive. However how is it doing those side to side movements? Locking the front brakes and skidding the back wheels?
    Yes, that is really a silly party trick. The westerners who have driven these cars and tried that mode say you can smell the burning rubber if you actually do that for any length of time.

    What I did find out is that BYD have 100k engineers doing their R&D.....and 900k work for them. At Jag, I presume its some bloke called Bob who has been their 50 years and a couple of recent grads.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 53,918

    kle4 said:

    Scott_xP said:

    MattW said:

    Roger said:

    Nigelb said:

    vik said:

    vik said:

    I posted this interview yesterday before having had chance to listen to the whole thing but Scott Bessent is probably the best advocate for the Trump administration at the moment. Far more gravitas and experience than JD Vance.

    He makes a good case for what Trump is trying to do economically:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnX1SQfgJI

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking for a way out of the Trump administration following the Republican president’s disastrous tariff rollout damaged his “credibility,” alleged MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Friday.

    ....

    Ruhle suggested that Bessent, who built his $521 million fortune managing massive hedge funds, can’t stomach Trump’s “absurd tariff math,” which some critics have slammed as a “kindergarten-level understanding” of international trade.

    According to Ruhle’s sources, Trump is “not listening” to his treasury secretary, “the odd man out” in the president’s inner circle.


    https://www.thedailybeast.com/msnbc-host-stephanie-ruhle-alleges-trumps-treasury-sec-looking-for-an-exit-door/
    https://x.com/SRuhle/status/1908250911769506289

    NEW:
    Investors may be running for the hills, but Bessent is NOT.
    In response to talk that Secretary Bessent is potentially eying an exit to the Fed-
    A senior official inside the administration telling me.
    “Secretary Bessent is more committed than ever to his role as treasury secretary - he is meeting with the president several times a day and communicating with the rest of the cabinet.
    Obviously this week’s market reaction is painful - but this is about an economic reset.
    The secretary has no interest in moving to the Fed and his core focus of addressing our crippling debt/deficit”
    I trust the "inside sources" more than the "senior official" trying to do damage control.

    The fact that they feel that they need to do damage control means that the rumours about Bessent's exit are real.
    How long will it be before the tariffs are walked back ?
    No one voted to be poorer - or rather, a lot of Americans did, back in November, but precious few of them would have voted to be poorer, had they realised the full consequences of what they were doing.
    Hopefully after a realignment of nations. The US have shown themselves to be unreliable. Time for a new beginning. (We can dump Israel at the same time)
    I think most want a realignment of nations across the globe, but it will take years and do we have the leaders capable of such a dramatic change ?
    It may be quicker than you think.

    Mr Trump burnt down the USA's international accumulated political capital in a fortnight, burnt down his relationships with allies of a century in a month, and has gone a long way to destroying democracy and the rule of law in the USA itself in about 6-8 weeks.

    Now he's well on the way to killing their science base, and has perhaps hard wired in a recession beyond the 1930s.

    We'll see. Needs must and the devil drives.
    Will it be faster than Nintendo...

    https://bsky.app/profile/joxley.jmoxley.co.uk/post/3lm3322qiuc2y
    Not really related but a reply on that thread about people expecting too much evidence due to tv (the csi effect) and a common follow up.

    also the idea that circumstance evidence = weak evidence. No! A strong chain of circumstantial evidence is about as strong as you can get for e.g. murder short of discovering the perpetrator either in the act or in the possession of a collection of trophies and a detailed diary.
    On juries, we have the specific problem that academic research into how our juries reach their decisions is effectively illegal. What is said in the jury room stays in the jury room, by law.
    That is not a bug (problem) it is a feature. You only get honest actions/decisions when they are anonymous.
    There was a proposal from the Blair years to allow “investigation” of “problematic” verdicts.

    David Davis got that deep sixed at very early stage.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 30,544
    edited April 6
    viewcode said:

    isam said:

    "The best place to watch the drama of Britain’s fastest changing postcode is next to Rainham’s 12th-century Norman church. At quarter past six, a tube-carriage haul of glum commuters is dumped at the station, where Essex meets the London sprawl. The final slog home is a curious walk of shame: past the gated Georgian pomp of Rainham Hall, and a sign for the Prawn Hub takeaway, mocked up in glaringly familiar colours. Barrack rows of new builds await them, following the pylons out to the desolate Rainham Marsh, where once upon a time, the Britain of the Nineties dreamt of building its own Disneyland.

    What’s it like living here? I ask two men skulking off to the pub through the graveyard, past a pair of Lithuanian builders drinking cans. “It used to feel like a lovely English village,” says one. “Now it’s a fucking shithole and I can’t wait to get out.”"

    https://unherd.com/2025/04/reform-is-coming-for-dagenham/

    Good article, and quite frightening for Labour. I don't know if Reform will win (we are too far out) but it's easy to see a scenario where they do. See also

    https://unherd.com/2025/03/reform-wont-save-britain/

    Interesting article. I tune out when someone suggests something like this:

    As a committed Thatcherite, Farage (like all of Reform’s top brass) ironically backed the economic paradigm that has caused British decline to start with.
    British decline has been happening in relative terms since 1850, and in an undeniable way since the wars. Anyone who thinks it started in 1979, or even phrases their piece poorly enough to allow the reader to suppose that is what they meant, cannot expect to be taken seriously.

  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    edited April 6
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Something new every day. I did not know that one of the famous Lib Dem Dominatrices made some of her films in the party HQ in Ashfield :neutral: .

    That building is now I think occupied by the Ashfield Independents.

    A Lib Dem spokesman said today: “Neither Rachel Madden or the Ashfield Liberal Democrat Party was aware that the space used there by Michelle Gent on May 20, 2012 was being used for purposes related to the films you reference.”

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/liberal-democrat-activist-uses-local-5460386
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 59,114

    rcs1000 said:

    On the subject of bringing industries back on shore, tariffs are a very inefficient way of doing it.

    Why?

    Because how can you, as a business owner be sure that the tariff policy will continue? If you build a factory to make MAGA hats, and then the tariffs come down, then you are really stuffed, because you've spent all this money on a factory and it can't compete.

    Which is why most industrial support in countries like China is via subsidised finance. You want to build a $100m factory, well the government will set you up with one of the State supported banks, who'll lend you $95m for 20 years at 3%.

    That funding - which is what the Germans did in East Germany too - is much more effective at stimulating a domestic manufacturing industry because your loan is set in stone for the next 20 years. It's not like a tariff which might get pulled if the President cuts a deal with the Vietnamese government, or if a new administration gets in with different priorities.

    You make a strong case for a constitutional amendment against free trade.
    Of course I do William
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,453

    Pulpstar said:

    MattW said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Mark Carney compares Trumpski torching the US economy to Brexit

    https://x.com/liberal_party/status/1908643764304044132

    The least surprising comment in all this chaos

    In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
    How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.

    The art of the deal.
    Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided

    And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
    "He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
    So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
    One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
    So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.

    Let’s see what happens.

    I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
    As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?

    The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
    Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.

    I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.

    We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
    If 80-90% don't want it I'd have thought it wouldn't sell ?
    You won’t be allowed to know it’s there.
    Of course you will.

    British chicken has union flags on the packaging and would be cheaper.

    So who is going to buy chicken which is lower quality, more expensive and imported ?
    The US in negotiations has explicitly criticised what they call “unjustified” labelling: https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/why-labels-wont-protect-uk-food-standards-from-a-us-trade-deal-ahUlA9H2YOWw
    They can criticize what they want but the UK government isn't going to make it illegal for UK supermarkets to put union flags or the world 'British' on UK produce.

    Nor does that deal with the fundamental fact that US food tends to cost more.
    If the UK doesn’t agree to their demands, there might not be any trade deal. These aren’t just abstract criticisms: they were part of trade negotiations.
  • AnneJGPAnneJGP Posts: 3,328

    Taz said:

    MattW said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Mark Carney compares Trumpski torching the US economy to Brexit

    https://x.com/liberal_party/status/1908643764304044132

    The least surprising comment in all this chaos

    In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
    How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.

    The art of the deal.
    Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided

    And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
    "He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
    So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
    One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
    So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.

    Let’s see what happens.

    I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
    As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?

    The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
    Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.

    I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.

    We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
    People don’t have to buy chlorinated chicken though. I don’t see the issue. Give the consumer resistance I cannot see it being sold here in numbers to make it worthwhile even if it was allowed.
    Consumer resistance might stop chlorinated chicken being sold directly to supermarket customers but in practice it would be sold to food processing companies instead, and the customer would have no idea what is in their meat pie, kebab or kyev kyiv.
    Such companies are already sourcing the cheapest possible meat. How will pricier chlorinated chicken transported from the US beat that price?
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 13,453
    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 76,113

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    That's the point, though, isn't it ?
    Fine to have immigration rules; not fine to arbitrarily detain people (or worse).

    Lots of people make silly mistakes, particularly with paperwork. The penalties for that when visiting the US have made it a somewhat unattractive destination. Whatever one's political views.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6
    Nigelb said:

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    That's the point, though, isn't it ?
    Fine to have immigration rules; not fine to arbitrarily detain people (or worse).

    Lots of people make silly mistakes, particularly with paperwork. The penalties for that when visiting the US have made it a somewhat unattractive destination. Whatever one's political views.
    US immigration will have never seen this as "silly mistake". She repeatedly broke the visa rules and she lied to them. The second part is a huge no no, and always has been. You absolutely will get the wrath of them if they find out you didn't tell the truth.

    What we don't know is why the extended detention. Is this new standard policy or is it that the shear number of people they are dealing with is overloading the system. The videos by Peter Santnello suggest that the Canadian border is as broken as the Southern one, because it traditionally saw nothing much more than the odd moose illegally straying into the US, but in recent years its 1000s and 1000s of illegal immigrants.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 5,564
    AnneJGP said:

    Taz said:

    MattW said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Mark Carney compares Trumpski torching the US economy to Brexit

    https://x.com/liberal_party/status/1908643764304044132

    The least surprising comment in all this chaos

    In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
    How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.

    The art of the deal.
    Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided

    And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
    "He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
    So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
    One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
    So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.

    Let’s see what happens.

    I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
    As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?

    The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
    Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.

    I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.

    We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
    People don’t have to buy chlorinated chicken though. I don’t see the issue. Give the consumer resistance I cannot see it being sold here in numbers to make it worthwhile even if it was allowed.
    Consumer resistance might stop chlorinated chicken being sold directly to supermarket customers but in practice it would be sold to food processing companies instead, and the customer would have no idea what is in their meat pie, kebab or kyev kyiv.
    Such companies are already sourcing the cheapest possible meat. How will pricier chlorinated chicken transported from the US beat that price?
    They'd have to beat £4/kg for brazilian chicken breast:

    https://www.ckfastfoods.com/product/chicken-fillet-brazilian-15kg-seara

    Even UK chicken breasts are only £4.17/kg at retail:

    https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-chicken-breast-fillets-1.2kg/38563.html
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 29,882

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    OMG. She even speculates about Liz Truss's necklace!
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    carnforth said:

    AnneJGP said:

    Taz said:

    MattW said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    viewcode said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Mark Carney compares Trumpski torching the US economy to Brexit

    https://x.com/liberal_party/status/1908643764304044132

    The least surprising comment in all this chaos

    In the meantime Starmer is taking the benefit of Brexit by prioritising trade deals with the US, India and Australia
    How is Starmer's post Brexit "deal" with the US going? Ten percent on all imports from the UK compared to zip in the other direction.

    The art of the deal.
    Well it seems Darren Jones on Sky confirms it is a Brexit divided

    And you do not mention the 20% on the EU
    "He is hurting us less than the other guy" does not make it free trade. Somebody who is imposing tariffs on the UK is not interested in free trade.
    So given we apply tariffs to US goods coming into the U.K. presumably we’re not interested in free trade either ?
    One can be interested in free trade while still having other concerns and wanting reciprocity. The test of whether the UK is interested in free trade with the US, and vice versa, is whether we’re moving towards lower tariffs.
    So we’re interested but not interested enough to do anything about it.

    Let’s see what happens.

    I reckon we should just get rid of them and see what happens. Call his bluff.
    As you noted in another post, Trump wants a win. That implies we should negotiate something that looks like a win to him, which might involve dropping our tariffs. Just dropping them unilaterally might not work, however. Where’s the leverage in a future negotiation if we’ve already dropped them?

    The other issue is that there are trade barriers other than tariffs. Trump has said he wants the UK to drop food safety standards. I can see resistance to doing that from UK consumers.
    Lee Anderson's been on that one, citing lettuce.

    I'm not sure if he's checked how many people don't want US needs-to-be-chlorine-washed chicken (off the top of my head: 80-90%) here, and what this does for his attempted populism.

    We'll see how the "patriots" react, and what happens to the different factions of his voting coalition.
    People don’t have to buy chlorinated chicken though. I don’t see the issue. Give the consumer resistance I cannot see it being sold here in numbers to make it worthwhile even if it was allowed.
    Consumer resistance might stop chlorinated chicken being sold directly to supermarket customers but in practice it would be sold to food processing companies instead, and the customer would have no idea what is in their meat pie, kebab or kyev kyiv.
    Such companies are already sourcing the cheapest possible meat. How will pricier chlorinated chicken transported from the US beat that price?
    They'd have to beat £4/kg for brazilian chicken breast:

    https://www.ckfastfoods.com/product/chicken-fillet-brazilian-15kg-seara

    Even UK chicken breasts are only £4.17/kg at retail:

    https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-chicken-breast-fillets-1.2kg/38563.html
    "Chlorinated Chicken" is a bit of a red herring. It's also about animal welfare, where Europe is ahead of the USA.

    As AI put it when asked for an example:

    "In the UK, litter must be removed and chicken houses cleaned between ocks. In the USA, litter is not always removed between ocks.

    This is an AI typo, and not in Scotland.

    To paraphrase the potato advert - for ocks read flocks.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 50,995
    With Rawnsley on holiday yet again, here’s today’s sunny Sunday Hardman:

    [LibDems are hoping they] can hoover up more voters in the “blue wall” of the home counties where the Conservatives have alienated reasonably centrist middle-class types both by being incompetent in government and lurching right.

    The party feels it is appealing to a new cohort of voters in affluent parts of Oxfordshire and Surrey who have voted Conservative all their lives but who feel left behind by their former choice. They are more internationalist, upscale, traditionally Tory voters with grownup children who live in flats affected by the cladding crisis.

    Now, as revealed in this paper today, the party is calling for a vote in parliament on any trade deal between the UK and US. The tactic would force Labour MPs in traditionally non-Labour rural areas to appear to take a side against their already angry farming constituents – as well as making the Tories take the same uncomfortable choice in public. It is an effective approach, as it pitches the Lib Dem protest mentality against the necessity for the government to be pragmatic.

    Davey will be performing more stunts in the local election campaign like his famous Windermere paddle board fall. He knows his party won’t be the main story of the locals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to hold more sway over the discourse than many realise.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    IanB2 said:

    With Rawnsley on holiday yet again, here’s today’s sunny Sunday Hardman:

    [LibDems are hoping they] can hoover up more voters in the “blue wall” of the home counties where the Conservatives have alienated reasonably centrist middle-class types both by being incompetent in government and lurching right.

    The party feels it is appealing to a new cohort of voters in affluent parts of Oxfordshire and Surrey who have voted Conservative all their lives but who feel left behind by their former choice. They are more internationalist, upscale, traditionally Tory voters with grownup children who live in flats affected by the cladding crisis.

    Now, as revealed in this paper today, the party is calling for a vote in parliament on any trade deal between the UK and US. The tactic would force Labour MPs in traditionally non-Labour rural areas to appear to take a side against their already angry farming constituents – as well as making the Tories take the same uncomfortable choice in public. It is an effective approach, as it pitches the Lib Dem protest mentality against the necessity for the government to be pragmatic.

    Davey will be performing more stunts in the local election campaign like his famous Windermere paddle board fall. He knows his party won’t be the main story of the locals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to hold more sway over the discourse than many realise.

    Fire eating? Sword juggling? Sky diving with no parachute?
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,574

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    OMG. She even speculates about Liz Truss's necklace!
    She loses all credibility with the claim to have attended lectures.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 76,113
    Is this language intended to get China to the negotiating table ?

    Kudlow: "Buying cheap goods is not a real prosperity, and we don't have to accept that. So you lay the law down, that's all. Look, all the badly behaving children in Asia and elsewhere are coming home to papa. They're all on the phone begging for mercy."
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908262557673996773
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,561

    IanB2 said:

    With Rawnsley on holiday yet again, here’s today’s sunny Sunday Hardman:

    [LibDems are hoping they] can hoover up more voters in the “blue wall” of the home counties where the Conservatives have alienated reasonably centrist middle-class types both by being incompetent in government and lurching right.

    The party feels it is appealing to a new cohort of voters in affluent parts of Oxfordshire and Surrey who have voted Conservative all their lives but who feel left behind by their former choice. They are more internationalist, upscale, traditionally Tory voters with grownup children who live in flats affected by the cladding crisis.

    Now, as revealed in this paper today, the party is calling for a vote in parliament on any trade deal between the UK and US. The tactic would force Labour MPs in traditionally non-Labour rural areas to appear to take a side against their already angry farming constituents – as well as making the Tories take the same uncomfortable choice in public. It is an effective approach, as it pitches the Lib Dem protest mentality against the necessity for the government to be pragmatic.

    Davey will be performing more stunts in the local election campaign like his famous Windermere paddle board fall. He knows his party won’t be the main story of the locals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to hold more sway over the discourse than many realise.

    Fire eating? Sword juggling? Sky diving with no parachute?
    He could go to Florida and try alligator wrestling to symbolise his opposition to Trump.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 30,544
    edited April 6

    IanB2 said:

    With Rawnsley on holiday yet again, here’s today’s sunny Sunday Hardman:

    [LibDems are hoping they] can hoover up more voters in the “blue wall” of the home counties where the Conservatives have alienated reasonably centrist middle-class types both by being incompetent in government and lurching right.

    The party feels it is appealing to a new cohort of voters in affluent parts of Oxfordshire and Surrey who have voted Conservative all their lives but who feel left behind by their former choice. They are more internationalist, upscale, traditionally Tory voters with grownup children who live in flats affected by the cladding crisis.

    Now, as revealed in this paper today, the party is calling for a vote in parliament on any trade deal between the UK and US. The tactic would force Labour MPs in traditionally non-Labour rural areas to appear to take a side against their already angry farming constituents – as well as making the Tories take the same uncomfortable choice in public. It is an effective approach, as it pitches the Lib Dem protest mentality against the necessity for the government to be pragmatic.

    Davey will be performing more stunts in the local election campaign like his famous Windermere paddle board fall. He knows his party won’t be the main story of the locals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to hold more sway over the discourse than many realise.

    Fire eating? Sword juggling? Sky diving with no parachute?
    He could go to Florida and try alligator wrestling to symbolise his opposition to Trump.
    I pity the alligator that finds itself in a backbiting contest with a lib dem.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 29,882

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    OMG. She even speculates about Liz Truss's necklace!
    She loses all credibility with the claim to have attended lectures.
    I suppose the other possibility is that Melissa lurks here and read @Leon's necklace intelligence. Is there anything more on Finland?
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 23,996

    BYD has released a video of its new Yangwang U7 EV that can quickly raise itself on the road in a fraction of a second to avoid obstacles, parallel park in place, and more.

    https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1908749512195137587

    I am just back from Asia, saw lots of BYDs, not so many Teslas.

    Pretty impressive. However how is it doing those side to side movements? Locking the front brakes and skidding the back wheels?
    I do not know, but I assumed it had a motor for each wheel
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    IanB2 said:

    With Rawnsley on holiday yet again, here’s today’s sunny Sunday Hardman:

    [LibDems are hoping they] can hoover up more voters in the “blue wall” of the home counties where the Conservatives have alienated reasonably centrist middle-class types both by being incompetent in government and lurching right.

    The party feels it is appealing to a new cohort of voters in affluent parts of Oxfordshire and Surrey who have voted Conservative all their lives but who feel left behind by their former choice. They are more internationalist, upscale, traditionally Tory voters with grownup children who live in flats affected by the cladding crisis.

    Now, as revealed in this paper today, the party is calling for a vote in parliament on any trade deal between the UK and US. The tactic would force Labour MPs in traditionally non-Labour rural areas to appear to take a side against their already angry farming constituents – as well as making the Tories take the same uncomfortable choice in public. It is an effective approach, as it pitches the Lib Dem protest mentality against the necessity for the government to be pragmatic.

    Davey will be performing more stunts in the local election campaign like his famous Windermere paddle board fall. He knows his party won’t be the main story of the locals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to hold more sway over the discourse than many realise.

    That makes several assumptions about the content of any Trade Deal.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,328

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    If the Tories had selected Melissa the UK might still have a functioning economy
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,328
    Nigelb said:

    Is this language intended to get China to the negotiating table ?

    Kudlow: "Buying cheap goods is not a real prosperity, and we don't have to accept that. So you lay the law down, that's all. Look, all the badly behaving children in Asia and elsewhere are coming home to papa. They're all on the phone begging for mercy."
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908262557673996773

    Sickos!
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 98,367
    edited April 6

    This is one reason Russia wanted a ceasefire to include the Black Sea area:

    "Ukraine is under a heavy russian missile attack launched from the Black Sea, with their planes reportedly heading to launch cruise missiles‼️"

    https://x.com/BohuslavskaKate/status/1908658484142326055

    When is Trump, his minions and his supporters going to realise they are being played by Putin? Or, worse, when are they going to care?

    They're not being played at all - they want Ukraine to suffer, that much is clear. Aligning with Putin doesn't bother them, it is just a question of how blatantly to do so.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 6,304

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    I'm not sure why you are so keen to insist that nothing has changed since Trump took office - you took the same line in other cases. Trump made executive orders to change things.

    Here's an executive order from 20th January:

    The Secretary of State, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall promptly:

    (i) identify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible


    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-othernational-security-and-public-safety-threats/
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 98,367
    MattW said:

    IanB2 said:

    With Rawnsley on holiday yet again, here’s today’s sunny Sunday Hardman:

    [LibDems are hoping they] can hoover up more voters in the “blue wall” of the home counties where the Conservatives have alienated reasonably centrist middle-class types both by being incompetent in government and lurching right.

    The party feels it is appealing to a new cohort of voters in affluent parts of Oxfordshire and Surrey who have voted Conservative all their lives but who feel left behind by their former choice. They are more internationalist, upscale, traditionally Tory voters with grownup children who live in flats affected by the cladding crisis.

    Now, as revealed in this paper today, the party is calling for a vote in parliament on any trade deal between the UK and US. The tactic would force Labour MPs in traditionally non-Labour rural areas to appear to take a side against their already angry farming constituents – as well as making the Tories take the same uncomfortable choice in public. It is an effective approach, as it pitches the Lib Dem protest mentality against the necessity for the government to be pragmatic.

    Davey will be performing more stunts in the local election campaign like his famous Windermere paddle board fall. He knows his party won’t be the main story of the locals, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to hold more sway over the discourse than many realise.

    That makes several assumptions about the content of any Trade Deal.
    It doesn't matter what is in it, what matters is whether people in general will think it is a good or bad thing, and so what is politically the best stance to take about it.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6
    kamski said:

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    I'm not sure why you are so keen to insist that nothing has changed since Trump took office - you took the same line in other cases. Trump made executive orders to change things.

    Here's an executive order from 20th January:

    The Secretary of State, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall promptly:

    (i) identify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible


    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-othernational-security-and-public-safety-threats/
    My general point is that the media keep running these individual edge cases. 1000s of people from the UK will go through US immigration every day (5 million a year apparently), and they have found a single case of a UK citizen where the girl broke the rules, lied to officials and it ended badly. Its classic media scare stories.

    Breaking your visa conditions and lying to immigration officials will have got you in serious trouble every day of the week with US immigration. I have zero issue going to the US and will doing shortly for work.

    I have also said that the Trump policy on departing South Americans to El Salvador is the real issue. There people aren't been deported to their own country and immediately imprisoned without any legal oversight. This is hugely problematic on numerous fronts.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,626
    I've received a very poorly written email from Bradford Council regarding postal votes. It starts out OK, by saying that you now need to reapply to keep using a postal vote. But it then says that if you don't want a postal vote any more, you need to write to them.

    Nowhere does it say that if you don't reapply, then you just go back to in-person voting by default.

    Poor.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,789

    kamski said:

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    I'm not sure why you are so keen to insist that nothing has changed since Trump took office - you took the same line in other cases. Trump made executive orders to change things.

    Here's an executive order from 20th January:

    The Secretary of State, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall promptly:

    (i) identify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible


    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-othernational-security-and-public-safety-threats/
    My general point is that the media keep running these individual edge cases. 1000s of people from the UK will go through US immigration every day, and they have found a single case of a UK citizen where the girl broke the rules, lied to officials and it ended badly. Its classic media scare stories.

    Breaking your visa conditions and lying to immigration officials will have got you in serious trouble every day of the week with US immigration. I have zero issue going to the US and will doing shortly for work.

    I have also said that the Trump policy on departing South Americans to El Salvador is the real issue. There people aren't been deported to their own country and immediately imprisoned without any legal oversight.
    now you are just complaining about the whole basis of news reporting.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,133
    edited April 6

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    I wonder which one has fucked more people?
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,328
    IanB2 said:

    Roger said:

    Israel really seems to have gone a bit mental. Presumably these are two Labour MPs who are not Labour Friends of Israel and therefore have not accepted the Israeli dollar (shekel).
    I’m sure Bibi is quaking in his boots after facing the watery wrath of David Lammy.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9133z2v30o

    Kemi Badenoch has said she agrees with the Israeli decision. What a foolsh thing to do. All her MPs will now be asked if they agree with her. I'd be surprised if even Farage would step into that rabbit hole
    Surely any country is able to refuse entry to any foreign citizen, for whatever reason.
    Badenoch said she did not know the 2 Labour mps involved as they were elected last July but affirmed any country's right to refuse entry to any foreign citizen

    Not sure what the problem is with her view
    Siding with a pariah state whose leader is wanted for war crimes, over our own parliament, isn’t a good look.
    Not very smart either when she'll be competing with the Lib Dems for some of the civilised Southern seats. She should leave that sort of stuff to Jenrick
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 34,171
    "Mother jailed for Southport X post should be freed, says former prime minister
    Liz Truss says Lucy Connolly was ‘victim of politicised two-tier justice system in Starmer’s Britain’" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/lucy-connolly-jailed-southport-tweet-freed-braverman/
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 22,166
    Nobody who has experienced an American supermarket wants to allow their god-awful food into the UK.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 30,992
    edited April 6
    Andy_JS said:

    "Mother jailed for Southport X post should be freed, says former prime minister
    Liz Truss says Lucy Connolly was ‘victim of politicised two-tier justice system in Starmer’s Britain’" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/lucy-connolly-jailed-southport-tweet-freed-braverman/

    Next stop, demanding political prisoner Yaxley -Lennon is released?

    There is a time to speak and a time where saying nothing is of substantially greater value. A lesson I have learned from both Truss and Badenoch today.
  • TazTaz Posts: 17,262
    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Personally I don’t think he will but if I knew that I’d keep Schtum and look forward to making a killing.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    Interesting 2 minute video about Ordnance Survey benchmarks, of whch I find I have about 4 in my lane. They are everywhere.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWxXyR4ifbk
  • No_Offence_AlanNo_Offence_Alan Posts: 4,924

    Sean_F said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    This is the plan ?

    Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer says Trump wants to onshore garment factories from Vietnam and Cambodia to the United States
    https://x.com/atrupar/status/1908240308845879423

    Yes, those evil Cambodians with their gdp per capita of about 3 cents a year, stealing the opportunities of Americans on $80,000 a year, who want to work in factories 14 hours a day, sewing hoodies together

    God help us
    Why are you so shocked by this - of course this is an aim of tariffs.
    Because it is stupid. Americans don't and won't work in factories for Cambodian wages. So presumably these are going to be robotised factories. Which doesn't mean more jobs for Americans just fewer jobs for Cambodians

    If Trump wants to "level the playing field" and make America wealthy again he should look at massive American corporations - eg Apple - that book all their profits in Ireland or Amsterdam or the Kerguelen Islands - and thereby pay almost nothing - and force them to reshore that cash

    That would be justified and also economically sensible, and good for America (even if it fucks Ireland, but hey ho)
    Very slightly tangential, but worth remembering...

    That is, *why* the US created NAFTA in the first place.

    You see, it used to be that all those migrants pouring over the border were Mexican. And whenever Mexico had a total economic meltdown, it resulted in massive movements of people over the border.

    The US government (of both colours) thought "hmmm... if Mexico was less poor, they wouldn't have constant financial crises that we needed to bail them out of, *and* there would be far fewer people trying to cross illegally into the US.

    And it worked!

    Between the end of the 1990s and 2016, the number of people crossing the Southern border collapsed, largely because American firms built factories to supply low value added goods to the US market. (And these factories employed Mexicans.)

    It even began to give Mexico a functioning economy beyond tourism and drug smuggling.

    But then three things happened:

    Firstly, lots of non-Mexicans started trying to cross Mexico to get into the US.
    Second, the Americans got addicted to opiates
    and
    Third, Donald Trump got elected

    And the combination of those things have sent it all to shit.
    The notion that all parties can benefit from trade, not just economically, but socially, by reducing the number of failed states, the level of conflict, and the poverty that is a cause of conflict, is alien to the MAGA’s.

    When I was born, 55% of the world’s people lived in absolute poverty, compared to 8% now. To me, that’s a great achievement. To Vance, it’s a disaster, because the USA is no longer as dominant as in 1967.
    How much of the credit for that do you think should go to the CCP?
    A lot of it is due to the demise of the CCCP.
  • TazTaz Posts: 17,262
    Andy_JS said:

    "Mother jailed for Southport X post should be freed, says former prime minister
    Liz Truss says Lucy Connolly was ‘victim of politicised two-tier justice system in Starmer’s Britain’" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/lucy-connolly-jailed-southport-tweet-freed-braverman/

    31 months does seem excessive, it was a ridiculous tweet and she knew it and pulled it after a few hours, but she must have been poorly advised as didn’t she plead guilty. So some punishment is justified.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,385

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    OMG. She even speculates about Liz Truss's necklace!
    She loses all credibility with the claim to have attended lectures.
    I suppose the other possibility is that Melissa lurks here and read @Leon's necklace intelligence. Is there anything more on Finland?
    One of those stories that you wish were true, but which is not.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 29,882

    Nobody who has experienced an American supermarket wants to allow their god-awful food into the UK.

    YouTube short of American in Sainsbury's (one-minute video). I think he is right about uncovered pastries.
    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uWDAseaZT3c
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,385
    Taz said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Mother jailed for Southport X post should be freed, says former prime minister
    Liz Truss says Lucy Connolly was ‘victim of politicised two-tier justice system in Starmer’s Britain’" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/lucy-connolly-jailed-southport-tweet-freed-braverman/

    31 months does seem excessive, it was a ridiculous tweet and she knew it and pulled it after a few hours, but she must have been poorly advised as didn’t she plead guilty. So some punishment is justified.
    Outside of a riot situation, she probably would have got a suspended sentence. In the middle of widespread rioting, the judiciary will hand down exemplary sentences.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,561

    Nobody who has experienced an American supermarket wants to allow their god-awful food into the UK.

    I don't recognise this. If all our supermarkets were replaced by Safeway, Walmart, Costco, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, it wouldn't be a problem (assuming prices stay the same).
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6
    Tres said:

    kamski said:

    Terrible story about a Brit trapped in US ICE system for weeks for a minor technicality on a tourist visa.

    No one in their right mind would visit the US now.

    Just incredible.


    "Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go."

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre

    The big problem in the eyes of immigration was she lied when questioned. And when they will have checked she had broken the visa rules on previous occasions as well. It is also why the Canadian refused her entry. And that I am 100% she would have got the same result pre-Trump.

    You are always going to run into trouble going on a scheme called Workaway, that tell you that you must get the correct visa and then when questioned say no work has been done. The US have always taken this very seriously.

    I don't really understand why the extended period in detention, rather than straight on a plane.
    I'm not sure why you are so keen to insist that nothing has changed since Trump took office - you took the same line in other cases. Trump made executive orders to change things.

    Here's an executive order from 20th January:

    The Secretary of State, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall promptly:

    (i) identify all resources that may be used to ensure that all aliens seeking admission to the United States, or who are already in the United States, are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible


    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-united-states-from-foreign-terrorists-and-othernational-security-and-public-safety-threats/
    My general point is that the media keep running these individual edge cases. 1000s of people from the UK will go through US immigration every day, and they have found a single case of a UK citizen where the girl broke the rules, lied to officials and it ended badly. Its classic media scare stories.

    Breaking your visa conditions and lying to immigration officials will have got you in serious trouble every day of the week with US immigration. I have zero issue going to the US and will doing shortly for work.

    I have also said that the Trump policy on departing South Americans to El Salvador is the real issue. There people aren't been deported to their own country and immediately imprisoned without any legal oversight.
    now you are just complaining about the whole basis of news reporting.
    My point is you don't have to look hard to find these cases have happened in the past, but for Westerners it is very rare and still is. Is ICE fit for purpose is a reasonable question.

    UK family held for weeks by ICE for ‘accidentally’ crossing border released back home
    https://globalnews.ca/news/6041508/uk-family-detained-ice-released/


    ICE held an American man in custody for 1,273 days.

    Since 2012, ICE has released from its custody more than 1,480 people after investigating their citizenship claims, according to agency figures. And a Times review of Department of Justice records and interviews with immigration attorneys uncovered hundreds of additional cases in the country’s immigration courts in which people were forced to prove they are Americans and sometimes spent months or even years in detention.

    https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-an-american-man-in-custody-for-1273-days

    Catherine Checas spent a total of 11 months inside the Berks County residential center in Pennsylvania – a family detention facility used by the US immigration authorities to hold mothers and children picked up as they illegally crossed the border with Mexico last summer.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/12/immigration-detention-centers-children
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    MattW said:

    Scott_xP said:

    OK, PB quiz time...

    Which day next week will Trump announce he is rolling back tariffs?

    Is there any chance he makes it to Friday?

    Question 2:

    How many Local Election candidates will be disowned by each political party?

    (Reform UK are already up to one - the Jimmy Savile fan.)
    I think its 2 isn't it? The Dan Norris news has kinda of trumped that.
    Yes, it's 2. A female candidate said some fruity things about Islamic migration.

    And yes, clearly Labour have said 'Hold my beer'.
    Yep.

    But it will all be a rolling newsfeed !

    Have any other parties lost any yet? Any Tory orange men or Lib Dem dominatrices?
    Speaking of which… “Differing paths of sex worker Melissa Todd and university classmate, Prime Minister Liz Truss”, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/i-went-to-oxford-with-liz-truss-now-shes-pm-and-im-a-se-274656/
    I wonder which one has fucked more people?
    Liz Truss f*cked at least one person most thoroughly.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,790
    edited April 6

    What I did find out is that BYD have 100k engineers doing their R&D.....and 900k work for them. At Jag, I presume its some bloke called Bob who has been their 50 years and a couple of recent grads.

    I think Land Rover have some smart people working for them

    I had a go in the new Defender round the jungle track at Solihull

    There are cameras in the door mirrors that can see the front wheels, and you can see the back wheels in the mirrors so you can see all 4 wheels at all times from the driving seat. You can also see a simulated view through the bonnet, so little excuse for getting stuck

    Even the Discovery Sport has some fancy camera tech that allows you to see a view from outside (multiple angles) while you park

    They also have 'smart' headlights. The full beam is actually a matrix of LEDs, and if it senses a vehicle in the beam in either direction it turns off that section of the matrix. It's freaky
  • eekeek Posts: 29,588

    Nobody who has experienced an American supermarket wants to allow their god-awful food into the UK.

    I don't recognise this. If all our supermarkets were replaced by Safeway, Walmart, Costco, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, it wouldn't be a problem (assuming prices stay the same).
    Well Walmart left the UK because they couldn't compete with Tesco.
    Safeway likewise gave up and ended up as part of Morrisons.
    Whole Foods isn't what anyone would call cheap
    Trader Joe is Aldi Nord which isn't in the UK because Aldi Süd have the UK. Aldi Süd actually have 2700 stores in the USA compared to 587 Trader Joe's.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 45,138
    MattW said:

    Interesting 2 minute video about Ordnance Survey benchmarks, of whch I find I have about 4 in my lane. They are everywhere.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWxXyR4ifbk

    You do see them in many places. Not around me though - the houses and buildings are too new. :)

    Less common, but also fascinating, are the military boundary markers (e.g. WD). Or, for Londoners, the beautiful coal tax posts

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-tax_post

    I quite like finding village lock-ups on my travels, and a nearby village has a very uncommon still extant communal bakehouse.

    https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1164387
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,295
    edited April 6
    Sean_F said:

    Taz said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Mother jailed for Southport X post should be freed, says former prime minister
    Liz Truss says Lucy Connolly was ‘victim of politicised two-tier justice system in Starmer’s Britain’" (£)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/lucy-connolly-jailed-southport-tweet-freed-braverman/

    31 months does seem excessive, it was a ridiculous tweet and she knew it and pulled it after a few hours, but she must have been poorly advised as didn’t she plead guilty. So some punishment is justified.
    Outside of a riot situation, she probably would have got a suspended sentence. In the middle of widespread rioting, the judiciary will hand down exemplary sentences.
    It wasn't a single tweet, and the best known one had 300k+ reads.

    She also set out her plan to commit perjury to avoid being held responsible.

    31 month sentence, of which 40% will be inside.

    Sentencing remarks:
    chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/R-v-Lucy-Connolly.pdf
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 83,185
    edited April 6
    Scott_xP said:

    What I did find out is that BYD have 100k engineers doing their R&D.....and 900k work for them. At Jag, I presume its some bloke called Bob who has been their 50 years and a couple of recent grads.

    I think Land Rover have some smart people working for them

    I had a go in the new Defender round the jungle track at Solihull

    There are cameras in the door mirrors that can see the front wheels, and you can see the back wheels in the mirrors so you can see all 4 wheels at all times from the driving seat. You can also see a simulated view through the bonnet, so little excuse for getting stuck

    Even the Discovery Sport has some fancy camera tech that allows you to see a view from outside (multiple angles) while you park

    They also have 'smart' headlights. The full beam is actually a matrix of LEDs, and if it senses a vehicle in the beam in either direction it turns off that section of the matrix. It's freaky
    I was under the impression the decent Chinese cars have all this stuff already? Plus multiple rivals to Tesla FSD.

    It seems like the Chinese have basically chucked the kitchen sink at every possible thing they can think of and now they are moving into consolidation stage plus moving to higher quality (not just competing on price) with the likes of BYD and XPeng brands that are winning.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 38,385
    MattW said:

    TimS said:

    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    Taking of rich and poor countries it’s interesting gauging where Mexico sits on that spectrum from early impressions (though capital cities are never wholly representative).

    Here’s the checklist

    - can you drink the tap water: maybe
    - Taxi touts at airport arrivals: a few, but fairly orderly
    - Risk of travellers diarrhoea: yes
    - Shanty towns: no
    - city air smells of unfiltered vehicle fumes: no
    - homeless children: no
    - source of undocumented migrants: yes
    - average age of cars over 10 years: marginal
    - taxis only take cash: no
    - Cash is crumpled and dog-eared: tba
    - random dangerous looking cables slung between houses: yes

    Overall giving very middle income vibes. Around Turkey level, below Greece but above Morocco.

    Have you come across the sword fire swallowers who are scattered around road junctions? Apparantly their life expectancy is mid thirties. Though one of my favourite capitals it has extremely poor and extremely rich living in very close proximity which makes it third world. You'll see armed guards outside the haciendas and peope living on pavements opposite. Having said that their use of colour is spectacular and the zoo if it's still there is wonderful. Are the VW's still everywhere?

    PS. If you get the chance the bull fights using horses are spectacular.
    All the cars seem to be Japanese hybrids.
    Taxis with the passenger seat missing. It was 20 years ago
    Looks like GDP per capita has almost doubled in 20 years. It’s around 14k, a little above China and similar to Russia and Turkey (though it’s behind those on PPP numbers).
    That I think is one of the Roman Candles in Trump's backside, waiting to explode.

    His head is stuck in 197x, and his international politics head in 1950 or 1960.

    He is not familiar with most of his poverty-stricken-waiting-to-be-exploited-by-Uncle-Sam victims now have a good deal of agency.
    Most of these once poverty-stricken nations, are now low to high middle income nations. Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, would have seen that as a good thing, and as beneficial to US interests.

    I expect that much as I do, Vance & Co. enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy novels set it in dystopian worlds, but they see these as blueprints.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 30,992
    ...
    Scott_xP said:

    What I did find out is that BYD have 100k engineers doing their R&D.....and 900k work for them. At Jag, I presume its some bloke called Bob who has been their 50 years and a couple of recent grads.



    I had a go in the new Defender round the jungle track at Solihull

    Chelmsley Wood on a Saturday night?
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