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  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 37,105
    edited August 22
    Blunkett joins Stringer.

    "The Telegraph
    @Telegraph

    Sir Keir Starmer should suspend the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in order to deport thousands of rejected asylum seekers housed in hotels, Lord Blunkett has said ⬇️"

    https://x.com/Telegraph/status/1959007719278383570
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 33,711
    ...
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Leon said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Taz said:

    Christ, the deification of Lucy Connolly is really really wearisome. It’s even worse than the demonisation of her as the next Tommy Robinson.

    She’s not our Mandela. It’s bloody ridiculous.

    She pleaded guilty and was sentenced accordingly.

    Blasphemer!!!!
    As someone said online she’s rapidly becoming a right wing George Floyd,
    But of course. In fact that's a brilliant comparison

    *files it away carefully for Gazette editor*

    All causes need a martyr. On examination, these martyrs are nearly always deeply flawed, but by then it doesn't matter, the narrative is put in place

    Geo Floyd was a hideous career criminal, guilty of terrible things, yet the surge of emotion around his ugly death was sufficient to get him sanctified. For a while. In retrospect, I am not even sure he was murdered. I suspect he died because of his drug use more than the clearly unthinking and brutal copper

    But no one cares now. The story is established, even as the emotions ebb

    Lucy C is not as extremely bad as Floyd nor as extremely beatified as him, but there are definite parellels, and she will suffice as a martyr for the alt.right cause
    There are no parallels, unless you're delusional.

    So I guess she will serve for the alt right.
    I've often wondered how you manage to make every single comment relentlessly beige and boring. It's like you have a tiny "make-this-more-boring" machine in your head, like one of those 19th century hand-cranked sugar cane mills, extracting all the juice of interest from your product, so that you finally excrete this tiny dessicated little dropping of a comment, like a 16th century turd done by a stoat, and it is left here, on the rich embroidered carpet of PB. And then you expect us to admire it
    If ChatGPT wrote that for you, you need to sack it. Surely you can do better yourself.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 61,178

    Apple is now in exploratory discussions with Google about using Gemini to power a revamped version of Siri.
    https://x.com/markgurman/status/1958941084249465104

    I am surprised how piss poor Apple have been at developing their own LLMs.

    The great irony is that their machines - even ones like my lowly base M4 Mac Mini - are really, really good at running LLMs locally.

    How funny that PCs are bad at it, but Microsoft gets it (both on the developer side, and in terms of having decent self developed LLMs).
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 87,034
    edited August 22
    rcs1000 said:

    Apple is now in exploratory discussions with Google about using Gemini to power a revamped version of Siri.
    https://x.com/markgurman/status/1958941084249465104

    I am surprised how piss poor Apple have been at developing their own LLMs.

    The great irony is that their machines - even ones like my lowly base M4 Mac Mini - are really, really good at running LLMs locally.

    How funny that PCs are bad at it, but Microsoft gets it (both on the developer side, and in terms of having decent self developed LLMs).
    They have even built MLX a rip off of JAX which is super optimised for running ML models on Apple silicon.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 87,034
    edited August 23
    Andy_JS said:

    Blunkett joins Stringer.

    "The Telegraph
    @Telegraph

    Sir Keir Starmer should suspend the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in order to deport thousands of rejected asylum seekers housed in hotels, Lord Blunkett has said ⬇️"

    https://x.com/Telegraph/status/1959007719278383570

    Add Polly Nosepeg and Lewis Goodall now going with the "well these conventions are out of date, they come from a different era, we need reform".

    I don't think Labour backbenchers would go for any of this though.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 37,105
    edited August 23
    "Denmark scraps book tax to fight 'reading crisis'

    The Danish government has announced it will abolish a 25% sales tax on books, in an effort to combat a "reading crisis". The tax is is one of the highest in the world. Culture Minister Jacob Engel-Schmidt says he hopes scrapping it will lead to more books flying off the shelves. The measure is expected to cost about 330 million kroner ($50m, £38m) a year.

    Data from the OECD, an intergovernmental think tank, shows that a quarter of Danish 15-year-olds cannot understand a simple text.

    "The reading crisis has unfortunately been spreading in recent years," said Engel-Schmidt. He added that he was "incredibly proud" of the move to scrap the tax."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crm48mvl33ro
  • fitalassfitalass Posts: 4,523


    Bill Kristol
    @BillKristol
    ·
    13m

    Bolton’s home raided, Gen. Kruse fired, Epstein coverup proceeds, seizure of 10% of Intel another step to state capitalism. One day in the somewhat chaotic but purposeful march towards…despotism.

    And does anyone think they’re doing all this so they can hand over power in 2028?

    X
    Noah Robertson@noahjrobertson
    Pentagon list of firings today grows:

    "Others removed include Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, the chief of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversees Naval Special Warfare Command"

    DIA Chief Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse was sacked first.

    W/@wstrobel
    https://x.com/noahjrobertson/status/1959002632309416141
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,669

    rcs1000 said:
    It doesn’t have the best stories I heard in there…

    (They are both skiing* stories)

    *apres
    It doesn't really sound that terrible to me. I am puzzled why it seems to be causing so much of stir.
    He’s a boring, dreadful, odious, boring little man. Did I mention he was boring?
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,669

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    I bring heartening news for our resident patriots. The A2 and M2 all the way from South East London to Faversham is festooned with British and English flags.

    The Union flags were looking quite pretty, backlit and glowing in the lowering early autumn sun, as I returned from the vineyard this evening.

    We must continue this flag shagging effort, for years, to instil the necessary emotions in the varous peoples of Great Britain
    It’s making me want to fly a saltire in the front garden, just to piss of the local unionists.
    I think more flags should be flown.

    I remember seeing a Somalian flag one time when driving through the Scottish Borders. Most diverting!

    I'd consider flying a Hapsburg flag, but everyone would assume I had a Kilkenny flag rotated 90 degrees.
    One of my neighbours flies the Royal Banner of Scotland from their house
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 10,669

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    Debt for equity swap
  • fitalassfitalass Posts: 4,523
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    A bit more data here.

    Over 1000 fewer WTE GPs over the last decade, and average list size increase of 319 per GP over that decade and 44% of appointments the same day.

    https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressures-in-general-practice-data-analysis

    General Practice is really struggling, which in turn puts massive pressure on hospital emergency departments, and on Social Care.
    Thirty years ago it seemed to be thriving with plenty of doctors keen to move into general practice when a GP friend persuaded me to volunteer as a patient on their training course. But a few years ago when I asked why there was now such a shortage of GPs leading to some medical practices struggling to continue as the older partners retired, they told me that its no longer regarded as an attractive career path because its looked down upon by their hospital colleagues? These days I would have thought that the fact individual practices no longer had to provide their own 24/7 out of hours emergency medical cover would have made it a more popular option?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 37,105
    Economist now has a slightly different take on the lockdowns than it did at the time.

    "Covid-19 sent the world mad
    The pandemic polarised voters and undermined trust in institutions" (£)

    https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/08/21/covid-19-sent-the-world-mad
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,770
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    A bit more data here.

    Over 1000 fewer WTE GPs over the last decade, and average list size increase of 319 per GP over that decade and 44% of appointments the same day.

    https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressures-in-general-practice-data-analysis

    General Practice is really struggling, which in turn puts massive pressure on hospital emergency departments, and on Social Care.
    2000 patients per GP was far fewer than I would have naively guessed. Bit of course, the key thing is the distribution of those patients. 2000 people in good health is very different from 2000 people with lots of ailments.

    One of my friend/acquaintances will complete her GP training but apparently there is no job for her afterwards which seems bizarre to me.

    I'm not sure I see any great solutions, but we may get to the point where people's risk tolerance/expectation of service changes and they would prefer to see any kind of medical professional rather than a GP.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586
    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Trump trued to pull that shot with TSMC.
    They said they'd just pay back thd grant: he folded.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 55,712


    Bill Kristol
    @BillKristol
    ·
    13m

    Bolton’s home raided, Gen. Kruse fired, Epstein coverup proceeds, seizure of 10% of Intel another step to state capitalism. One day in the somewhat chaotic but purposeful march towards…despotism.

    And does anyone think they’re doing all this so they can hand over power in 2028?

    It's blatantly obvious Trump isn't going to hand over power. He can't. He has immunity from crimes committed during his terms, but not ones before that. His family don't have immunity. His friends and associates don't. Trump and his camp are completely fucked as soon as a democrat walks in to the White House.

    He has to ensure that doesn't happen. So he'll run again in 2028, with a completely rigged election. People who insist he can't run in 2028 are blind to the shape of the monster they're fighting.

    I suspect Gavin Newsom is one dem who understands this. His attacks on Trump are not a build up to a 2028 presidential run, but a way of positioning California as the centre of an anti-MAGA bloc if the US starts to break up in the aftermath of a sham election.
    Yes. It is all a bit Netanyahu basically.

    Trump cannot leave the WH in 2028 without massive personal consequences.

    So he wont.

    Wake up America!!

    Fair chance he leaves the WH in a box before 2028.

    His ankles are huge. Heart working overtime.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 37,105
    Sounds slightly ominous.

    "@GBPolitcs

    Lucy Connolly will meet with Trump Administration officials tomorrow and is preparing legal action against the police

    [@danwootton]
    4:39 PM · Aug 22, 2025
    1M Views'"

    https://x.com/GBPolitcs/status/1958916917227315554
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,803
    Andy_JS said:

    "Denmark scraps book tax to fight 'reading crisis'

    The Danish government has announced it will abolish a 25% sales tax on books, in an effort to combat a "reading crisis". The tax is is one of the highest in the world. Culture Minister Jacob Engel-Schmidt says he hopes scrapping it will lead to more books flying off the shelves. The measure is expected to cost about 330 million kroner ($50m, £38m) a year.

    Data from the OECD, an intergovernmental think tank, shows that a quarter of Danish 15-year-olds cannot understand a simple text.

    "The reading crisis has unfortunately been spreading in recent years," said Engel-Schmidt. He added that he was "incredibly proud" of the move to scrap the tax."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crm48mvl33ro

    We did similar and the price stayed the same... Much like Rishi's fuel duty cut thinking about it,
  • TazTaz Posts: 20,649
    Andy_JS said:

    Sounds slightly ominous.

    "@GBPolitcs

    Lucy Connolly will meet with Trump Administration officials tomorrow and is preparing legal action against the police

    [@danwootton]
    4:39 PM · Aug 22, 2025
    1M Views'"

    https://x.com/GBPolitcs/status/1958916917227315554

    Andy_JS said:

    Sounds slightly ominous.

    "@GBPolitcs

    Lucy Connolly will meet with Trump Administration officials tomorrow and is preparing legal action against the police

    [@danwootton]
    4:39 PM · Aug 22, 2025
    1M Views'"

    https://x.com/GBPolitcs/status/1958916917227315554

    Looks like she’s being badly advised.

    Would that be a first ?
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,448
    Leon said:

    Increasingly the right is completely out of control and has no self-restraining mechanisms left. Certainly lost touch with what was conservativism as say Oakeshott or Burke or Scruton would understand it.
    Wh
    It is a race to see who can be first to just say 'burn it all down, every last fucking thing. Burn it.'



    Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸
    @DouglasCarswell

    Lucy Connolly judge Rahim Khimani refusal to grant bail was key to her coercion by the British state.

    He should be sanctioned by the US government, with all that that entails

    https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1958932614452322625

    Dunno. Scruton was pretty radical towards the end. Probably because the Left successfully cancelled him with a screed of lies - well done George Eaton of the New Statesman, you utter ****** - and then he died of cancer shortly after

    I went to some of Scruton's lectures at Birkbeck in the 80s as a callow smack addict Philosophy student. What a mind

    His guide to Modern Philosophy is perhaps the smartest book I have ever read: in that it took the most difficult and arcane of ideas (but important) and made them legible to an intelligent layman. That is an amazing gift, very very few have it

    Also he liked sex and wine. He was the last great English intellectual. Yes I am a fanboi. RIP
    Scruton was driven mad by his attempts to identify or construct a coherent philosophical basis for Thatcherism, once a serious project for right-wing intellectuals. The attempt has not been made for other leaders.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,448
    Andy_JS said:

    "Rupert Lowe MP
    @RupertLowe10

    Lucy Connolly is one very brave woman."

    https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1958925176713674854

    Lucy Connolly is the Lucy Letby de nos jours. Funny how they are all called Lucy. That girl in Peanuts, she was another one.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,448
    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,547

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,448

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 46,656

    Increasingly the right is completely out of control and has no self-restraining mechanisms left. Certainly lost touch with what was conservativism as say Oakeshott or Burke or Scruton would understand it.

    It is a race to see who can be first to just say 'burn it all down, every last fucking thing. Burn it.'



    Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸
    @DouglasCarswell

    Lucy Connolly judge Rahim Khimani refusal to grant bail was key to her coercion by the British state.

    He should be sanctioned by the US government, with all that that entails

    https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1958932614452322625

    What's notable here isn't the attack on a judge - UK judges are actively political and it's way past the time when they could claim to be inviolable. It's the casual assumption of a reverse colonial authority wielded by the USA over Britain. This should be strongly resisted. Carswell I'm sorry to say is a prat. Always has been.
    " UK judges are actively political "

    No, they really are not. It's just some people don't like the decisions - on law - they and the juries make. Judges are convenient scapegoats for politicians.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 46,656

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
    Intel has many significant problems. It has made a series of technical mistakes and poor business decisions over the last decade that have led it to be behind the curve.

    This investment will do little unless they start making very good technical and business decisions.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 62,856
    Good morning, everyone.

    Fittingly, I got a new 'feature' from Firefox to use AI to summarise this page.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 62,856
    edited August 23
    Also, got to love this story:
    girls continue to do better than boys at GCSEs: fears girls are getting left behind.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2q189kv7yo

    Ok, not sure the journalist understands how numbers work. Girls had a pass rate of 70.5% and boys 64.3%.

    Also, it mentions boys doing better at the top end of A-levels, which this story confirms:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62707l4lwvo

    But that's a 0.2% lead for boys (A/A* grades), swapping over a 0.4% lead for girls the previous year. So, essentially flat.

    Edited extra bit: tbf, second article does have a reference to boys being left behind, but ends with:

    "The conversation around boys' academic struggles and fears they are "being left behind" in education has been around for many years, but there was a renewed interest this year with the release of hit Netflix series Adolescence which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a classmate. "
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 3,746

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
    Intel has many significant problems. It has made a series of technical mistakes and poor business decisions over the last decade that have led it to be behind the curve.

    This investment will do little unless they start making very good technical and business decisions.
    Trump seems to have adopted the left wing corporatist policies of the 1970s. There is literally no economic policy failure he has not blundered into. The US economy is going to take years or even decades to recover from this spectacular incompetence.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 75,084

    Increasingly the right is completely out of control and has no self-restraining mechanisms left. Certainly lost touch with what was conservativism as say Oakeshott or Burke or Scruton would understand it.

    It is a race to see who can be first to just say 'burn it all down, every last fucking thing. Burn it.'



    Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸
    @DouglasCarswell

    Lucy Connolly judge Rahim Khimani refusal to grant bail was key to her coercion by the British state.

    He should be sanctioned by the US government, with all that that entails

    https://x.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1958932614452322625

    What's notable here isn't the attack on a judge - UK judges are actively political and it's way past the time when they could claim to be inviolable. It's the casual assumption of a reverse colonial authority wielded by the USA over Britain. This should be strongly resisted. Carswell I'm sorry to say is a prat. Always has been.
    I'm just wondering why he thinks Rahim Khimani should be greenlit to invade Ukraine.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 8,770

    Also, got to love this story:
    girls continue to do better than boys at GCSEs: fears girls are getting left behind.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2q189kv7yo

    Ok, not sure the journalist understands how numbers work. Girls had a pass rate of 70.5% and boys 64.3%.

    Also, it mentions boys doing better at the top end of A-levels, which this story confirms:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62707l4lwvo

    But that's a 0.2% lead for boys (A/A* grades), swapping over a 0.4% lead for girls the previous year. So, essentially flat.

    Edited extra bit: tbf, second article does have a reference to boys being left behind, but ends with:

    "The conversation around boys' academic struggles and fears they are "being left behind" in education has been around for many years, but there was a renewed interest this year with the release of hit Netflix series Adolescence which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a classmate. "

    Yes, a remarkable unwillingness to look at the facts.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 75,084
    edited August 23
    rkrkrk said:

    Also, got to love this story:
    girls continue to do better than boys at GCSEs: fears girls are getting left behind.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2q189kv7yo

    Ok, not sure the journalist understands how numbers work. Girls had a pass rate of 70.5% and boys 64.3%.

    Also, it mentions boys doing better at the top end of A-levels, which this story confirms:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62707l4lwvo

    But that's a 0.2% lead for boys (A/A* grades), swapping over a 0.4% lead for girls the previous year. So, essentially flat.

    Edited extra bit: tbf, second article does have a reference to boys being left behind, but ends with:

    "The conversation around boys' academic struggles and fears they are "being left behind" in education has been around for many years, but there was a renewed interest this year with the release of hit Netflix series Adolescence which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a classmate. "

    Yes, a remarkable unwillingness to look at the facts.
    We had the same thing with the OCR comments on a resits crisis.

    Well, duh. If you make the exams harder and more content-heavy, reduce the support available, and the time to teach it and then insist everyone who didn't pass them must resit them at every opportunity until they are 19 while providing no extra support whatsoever, *of course* there will be lots of resits.

    Just as under those circumstances most of them will of course fail again, according to the Einstein Apocryphal Principle of Stupidity. So *of course* the pass rate among people who resit will be far lower than for those who sit them first time.

    Why even somebody as dumb as Mr Cummings thought this would in any way whatsoever help matters rather than merely further turning these people off English and Maths is beyond me.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 16,777
    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 11,618
    edited August 23

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    No, it doesn't. Demographic change is relatively minor reason for the increase in public spending. England's demographics in particular aren't too bad at all due to immigration over the last 30 years. In terms of tax, economic participation rates and hours worked are much bigger drivers than demographics.

    I don't think people can grasp just how quickly health spending is increasing. You'd have to have extraordinary increases in people aged 70+ to account for it (or babies), but demographic change is slow and incremental. Other spending is actually growing quite slowly or not at all, with the exception of political choices like defence.

    Demographics are a useful scapegoat for people trying to avoid confronting the current fiscal challenges in my experience. Ultimately it's a political choice.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 80,004

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    My daughter's great grandmother turns 97 in November. Still living in her own house at the moment !
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 56,214
    Eabhal said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    No, it doesn't. Demographic change is relatively minor reason for the increase in public spending. England's demographics in particular aren't too bad at all due to immigration over the last 30 years. In terms of tax, economic participation rates and hours worked are much bigger drivers than demographics.

    I don't think people can grasp just how quickly health spending is increasing. You'd have to have extraordinary increases in people aged 70+ to account for it (or babies), but demographic change is slow and incremental. Other spending is actually growing quite slowly or not at all, with the exception of political choices like defence.

    Demographics are a useful scapegoat for people trying to avoid confronting the current fiscal challenges in my experience. Ultimately it's a political choice.
    The really depressing thing is the poor to negative rates of productivity in the NHS. We are pumping more and more money in to get less back. This is completely unsustainable. We need to find ways of improving NHS productivity radically. There were some good experiments about this in the last year, for example mass production on the same kind of operations over a weekend, but I am not seeing the urgency or political drive from the top that is required.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    TBF, it's about trying to domestic capacity.
    Intel wasn't going to keep the grant money otherwise, as its financial situation made meeting the grant conditions unlikely.

    Of all the daft things Trump has done this is actually fairly sensible.
    Attempting to force sound companies like TSMC to accept the same terms was more like the usual Trump stupidity, and has failed.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586
    Cicero said:

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
    Intel has many significant problems. It has made a series of technical mistakes and poor business decisions over the last decade that have led it to be behind the curve.

    This investment will do little unless they start making very good technical and business decisions.
    Trump seems to have adopted the left wing corporatist policies of the 1970s. There is literally no economic policy failure he has not blundered into. The US economy is going to take years or even decades to recover from this spectacular incompetence.
    No, his policies are far more incoherent.
    And largely motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck his weight around.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,534

    Eabhal said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    No, it doesn't. Demographic change is relatively minor reason for the increase in public spending. England's demographics in particular aren't too bad at all due to immigration over the last 30 years. In terms of tax, economic participation rates and hours worked are much bigger drivers than demographics.

    I don't think people can grasp just how quickly health spending is increasing. You'd have to have extraordinary increases in people aged 70+ to account for it (or babies), but demographic change is slow and incremental. Other spending is actually growing quite slowly or not at all, with the exception of political choices like defence.

    Demographics are a useful scapegoat for people trying to avoid confronting the current fiscal challenges in my experience. Ultimately it's a political choice.
    Respectfully disagree. The ratio of elderly to working age people has risen significantly in the last twenty years and has driven the rise in health spending as well as other age related spending. The ratio will continue to rise and continue to drive a worsening in the fiscal outlook. This is true not just in the UK but across the developed world (and will be far worse in some other countries, incidentally). There is already a robust positive relationship between government debt levels across countries and the old age dependency ratio.
    Check out eg the OBR's 2024 fiscal risk and long term projections document.
    All of the rise in government spending in the last thirty years has been driven by three items: health, welfare (including pensions) and debt service. Overall spending on everything else as a share of GDP has gone down. Of course how to deal with this is a political choice. Unfortunately, the electorate don't seem alert to the realities of the situation, and reject things like raising the pension age in line with life expectancy. Even small things like means testing the WFA are shot down.
    Government debt across the developed world is a Ponzi scheme.
    Affects the other side of the ledger as well. All those people who "paid in all their lives" did pay in. It's just that while they were paying in, they voted to pay in... not enough, really.

    Thatcherism (especially), Majorism and Blairism worked because of some temporary bits of good fortune- not just demographic, but the dependency ratio was a large part of it. The political kicker is that temporary good luck lasted long enough for us to take it for granted and assume it was the natural state of how things ought to be.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,705
    rkrkrk said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    A bit more data here.

    Over 1000 fewer WTE GPs over the last decade, and average list size increase of 319 per GP over that decade and 44% of appointments the same day.

    https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressures-in-general-practice-data-analysis

    General Practice is really struggling, which in turn puts massive pressure on hospital emergency departments, and on Social Care.
    2000 patients per GP was far fewer than I would have naively guessed. Bit of course, the key thing is the distribution of those patients. 2000 people in good health is very different from 2000 people with lots of ailments.

    One of my friend/acquaintances will complete her GP training but apparently there is no job for her afterwards which seems bizarre to me.

    I'm not sure I see any great solutions, but we may get to the point where people's risk tolerance/expectation of service changes and they would prefer to see any kind of medical professional rather than a GP.
    There are many sides to the crisis in General Practice. As a hospital practitioner I do understand some of it, but not all.

    One of the more bizarre features to the crisis is that fully trained GPs cannot get jobs at the end of training, in part because there's only funding for non-medical practitioners. Neither is there Locum work to be found. A system more designed to export staff to the Antipodes would be hard to construct. Incidentally when I worked in NZ a few decades ago the average list size there was 1000 patients, so half of the UK workload.

    There are cultural changes too. GPs want to work in salaried posts, not in partnerships, so there's loss of leadership. Practices have amalgamated and enlarged, some even being several hundred doctors. One of the pleasures of General Practice used to be that strong connection to community and knowledge of patients from cradle to grave.

    Other factors are loss of clinical autonomy, overbearing regulation, patient expectations, the relative attractions of hospital careers (shorter hours and better career prospects than my generation) the increasingly technical nature of medicine, the move to telephone consultations etc etc.

    Can it, and should it survive as we have known it? I don't think so, but what replaces it? In many countries people self refer directly to specialists, and maybe that would be a model, but that too requires change. In particular specialists need to work outside hospitals and become more generalist themselves for that to work.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,381
    I'm interested that the (alleged - who knows?) transcripts of the Maxwell interview have been published, redacted (eg names of Epstein victims redacted).

    It's a fairly transparent tissue of bollocks imo - your lie your head off to get Donald off the hook, and we'll send you to a prison holiday camp with no fences.

    The Ronan Polanksi answer beckons - French citizens who flee to France are not returned to the USA.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 75,084
    Nigelb said:

    Cicero said:

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
    Intel has many significant problems. It has made a series of technical mistakes and poor business decisions over the last decade that have led it to be behind the curve.

    This investment will do little unless they start making very good technical and business decisions.
    Trump seems to have adopted the left wing corporatist policies of the 1970s. There is literally no economic policy failure he has not blundered into. The US economy is going to take years or even decades to recover from this spectacular incompetence.
    No, his policies are far more incoherent.
    And largely motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck his weight around.
    TBF, there were lots of 'left wing corporatist' politicians in the Seventies who were motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck their weight around. All of the Soviet Union's leadership, for a start. Then most of the Union bosses in this country.
  • BattlebusBattlebus Posts: 1,424

    Eabhal said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    No, it doesn't. Demographic change is relatively minor reason for the increase in public spending. England's demographics in particular aren't too bad at all due to immigration over the last 30 years. In terms of tax, economic participation rates and hours worked are much bigger drivers than demographics.

    I don't think people can grasp just how quickly health spending is increasing. You'd have to have extraordinary increases in people aged 70+ to account for it (or babies), but demographic change is slow and incremental. Other spending is actually growing quite slowly or not at all, with the exception of political choices like defence.

    Demographics are a useful scapegoat for people trying to avoid confronting the current fiscal challenges in my experience. Ultimately it's a political choice.
    Respectfully disagree. The ratio of elderly to working age people has risen significantly in the last twenty years and has driven the rise in health spending as well as other age related spending. The ratio will continue to rise and continue to drive a worsening in the fiscal outlook. This is true not just in the UK but across the developed world (and will be far worse in some other countries, incidentally). There is already a robust positive relationship between government debt levels across countries and the old age dependency ratio.
    Check out eg the OBR's 2024 fiscal risk and long term projections document.
    All of the rise in government spending in the last thirty years has been driven by three items: health, welfare (including pensions) and debt service. Overall spending on everything else as a share of GDP has gone down. Of course how to deal with this is a political choice. Unfortunately, the electorate don't seem alert to the realities of the situation, and reject things like raising the pension age in line with life expectancy. Even small things like means testing the WFA are shot down.
    Government debt across the developed world is a Ponzi scheme.
    Affects the other side of the ledger as well. All those people who "paid in all their lives" did pay in. It's just that while they were paying in, they voted to pay in... not enough, really.

    Thatcherism (especially), Majorism and Blairism worked because of some temporary bits of good fortune- not just demographic, but the dependency ratio was a large part of it. The political kicker is that temporary good luck lasted long enough for us to take it for granted and assume it was the natural state of how things ought to be.
    In hindsight, Thatcher selling off the silver has had effects that were not clear at the time. Selling off successful UK companies or key infrastructure companies to overseas interests is just political failure.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,547
    edited August 23
    Nigelb said:

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    TBF, it's about trying to domestic capacity.
    Intel wasn't going to keep the grant money otherwise, as its financial situation made meeting the grant conditions unlikely.

    Of all the daft things Trump has done this is actually fairly sensible.
    Attempting to force sound companies like TSMC to accept the same terms was more like the usual Trump stupidity, and has failed.
    1) the Chips act money was ring fenced for investment in plant in the US.
    2) this money isn’t. So it will be spent on anything but plant in the US, probably.
    3) Intel have spent 100Bn over past decade or so on stock buy backs.

    These guys like finalisation. TSMC like investing in the next generation of technology. Which one is the losing strategy?

    You’d be better off building a National Chip Fab - latest processes etc
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,381
    kinabalu said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    I drove past a house in Stondon Massey nr Brentwood yesterday which had a huge Union Jack flying as well as a billboard saying "i am voting Reform"... have to say it made me think the people living there wouldn't be particularly nice, although if it were any other party I'd avoid them too. You just know they're going to be intense

    My previous neighbour had a life-size David Cameron cardboard cut-out in his hallway. If I didn't know TSE lived in Yorkshire I'd have my suspicions.
    Obviously apotropaic. Like plastic owls on the roof, and sound recordings of enormous dogs baying and barking. The question is, whom or what was it protecting against?
    Ah yes I suppose it could have been to scare away champagne socialists. But given this was Hampstead that would have been quite isolating.
    I think that @MarqueeMark will have some tales on these.

    We had a family friend who had a naked mannequin of his wife in the hallway. It had been made for an arts project.

    Does @Leon have any in his boudoir?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586
    MattW said:

    I'm interested that the (alleged - who knows?) transcripts of the Maxwell interview have been published, redacted (eg names of Epstein victims redacted).

    It's a fairly transparent tissue of bollocks imo - your lie your head off to get Donald off the hook, and we'll send you to a prison holiday camp with no fences.

    The Ronan Polanksi answer beckons - French citizens who flee to France are not returned to the USA.

    She's also claiming complete innocence, and never having witnessed any of Epstein's offending.

    To say that the transcript of this interview, carried out without witnesses, by Trump's personal lawyer, of a known perjurer seeking a pardon from Trump, lacks credibility would be an understatement ranking in magnitude against TSE's legendary modesty.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,705
    DavidL said:

    Eabhal said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    No, it doesn't. Demographic change is relatively minor reason for the increase in public spending. England's demographics in particular aren't too bad at all due to immigration over the last 30 years. In terms of tax, economic participation rates and hours worked are much bigger drivers than demographics.

    I don't think people can grasp just how quickly health spending is increasing. You'd have to have extraordinary increases in people aged 70+ to account for it (or babies), but demographic change is slow and incremental. Other spending is actually growing quite slowly or not at all, with the exception of political choices like defence.

    Demographics are a useful scapegoat for people trying to avoid confronting the current fiscal challenges in my experience. Ultimately it's a political choice.
    The really depressing thing is the poor to negative rates of productivity in the NHS. We are pumping more and more money in to get less back. This is completely unsustainable. We need to find ways of improving NHS productivity radically. There were some good experiments about this in the last year, for example mass production on the same kind of operations over a weekend, but I am not seeing the urgency or political drive from the top that is required.
    NHS productivity is improving again, but undeniably an issue (though on this I perhaps the legal profession has plenty of lessons to learn too!).

    Gimmicks like doing a lot of routine operations over a weekend don't really address the fundamental capacity issues. Why is this not possible during the week? Well the issues are, lack of beds, lack of anaesthetists, lack of theatre staff, lack of ITU support, interference from emergency work, high patient co-morbidity meaning that only healthy patients are suitable, and perhaps most of all lack of administrative staff to prep and book the patients. These sort of initiatives are the Potemkin villages of our time.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cicero said:

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
    Intel has many significant problems. It has made a series of technical mistakes and poor business decisions over the last decade that have led it to be behind the curve.

    This investment will do little unless they start making very good technical and business decisions.
    Trump seems to have adopted the left wing corporatist policies of the 1970s. There is literally no economic policy failure he has not blundered into. The US economy is going to take years or even decades to recover from this spectacular incompetence.
    No, his policies are far more incoherent.
    And largely motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck his weight around.
    TBF, there were lots of 'left wing corporatist' politicians in the Seventies who were motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck their weight around. All of the Soviet Union's leadership, for a start. Then most of the Union bosses in this country.
    Mere pikers alongside Trump.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,381
    edited August 23
    Lucy Connolly had some hard decisions to make.

    The Independent is reporting that she has been invited to meet officials from the Trump regime.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lucy-connolly-racist-tweet-prison-release-police-b2812635.html

    I'm not sure what restrictions she is under whilst serving the rest of her sentence on licence, but she's in danger of being trapped down the rabbit hole that has been built around her.

    She needs to move on rather than become a hero for the extremists. They will chew her up, exploit her, take the benefits, and then leave her destroyed.
  • eekeek Posts: 31,040
    edited August 23
    MattW said:

    Lucy Connolly had some hard decisions to make.

    The Independent is reporting that she has been invited to meet officials from the Trump regime.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lucy-connolly-racist-tweet-prison-release-police-b2812635.html

    I'm not sure what restrictions she is under whilst serving the rest of her sentence on licence, but she's in danger of being trapped down the rabbit hole that has been built around her. She needs to move on rather than become a hero for the extremists.

    Except there is a lot of money to be made down that rabbit hole. I just hope someone is looking after her monetary interests...

    You don't want to end up like Truss looking a fool having not made a couple of million to fall back on..
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586

    Nigelb said:

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    TBF, it's about trying to domestic capacity.
    Intel wasn't going to keep the grant money otherwise, as its financial situation made meeting the grant conditions unlikely.

    Of all the daft things Trump has done this is actually fairly sensible.
    Attempting to force sound companies like TSMC to accept the same terms was more like the usual Trump stupidity, and has failed.
    1) the Chips act money was ring fenced for investment in plant in the US.
    2) this money isn’t. So it will be spent on anything but plant in the US, probably.
    3) Intel have spent 100Bn over past decade or so on stock buy backs.

    These guys like finalisation. TSMC like investing in the next generation of technology. Which one is the losing strategy?

    You’d be better off building a National Chip Fab - latest processes etc
    I'm not saying this will be a success; the market price reaction of Intel on the news tells its own story.

    Simply that alongside everything else Trump has done, it's pretty normal behaviour, which it's possible to make a case for (though odd from the supposed party of the free market).
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,381
    Foxy said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    A bit more data here.

    Over 1000 fewer WTE GPs over the last decade, and average list size increase of 319 per GP over that decade and 44% of appointments the same day.

    https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressures-in-general-practice-data-analysis

    General Practice is really struggling, which in turn puts massive pressure on hospital emergency departments, and on Social Care.
    2000 patients per GP was far fewer than I would have naively guessed. Bit of course, the key thing is the distribution of those patients. 2000 people in good health is very different from 2000 people with lots of ailments.

    One of my friend/acquaintances will complete her GP training but apparently there is no job for her afterwards which seems bizarre to me.

    I'm not sure I see any great solutions, but we may get to the point where people's risk tolerance/expectation of service changes and they would prefer to see any kind of medical professional rather than a GP.
    There are many sides to the crisis in General Practice. As a hospital practitioner I do understand some of it, but not all.

    One of the more bizarre features to the crisis is that fully trained GPs cannot get jobs at the end of training, in part because there's only funding for non-medical practitioners. Neither is there Locum work to be found. A system more designed to export staff to the Antipodes would be hard to construct. Incidentally when I worked in NZ a few decades ago the average list size there was 1000 patients, so half of the UK workload.

    There are cultural changes too. GPs want to work in salaried posts, not in partnerships, so there's loss of leadership. Practices have amalgamated and enlarged, some even being several hundred doctors. One of the pleasures of General Practice used to be that strong connection to community and knowledge of patients from cradle to grave.

    Other factors are loss of clinical autonomy, overbearing regulation, patient expectations, the relative attractions of hospital careers (shorter hours and better career prospects than my generation) the increasingly technical nature of medicine, the move to telephone consultations etc etc.

    Can it, and should it survive as we have known it? I don't think so, but what replaces it? In many countries people self refer directly to specialists, and maybe that would be a model, but that too requires change. In particular specialists need to work outside hospitals and become more generalist themselves for that to work.
    I think not mentioned is that there has been a massive increase in the scope of work delivered by GPs.
  • BattlebusBattlebus Posts: 1,424
    Nigelb said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    Cicero said:

    pm215 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    White House announces chipmaker Intel to give US government 10% stake
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3zpdl3xdo

    "President Donald Trump said on Friday the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America."

    The Pentagon is also slated to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government negotiated for itself a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-intel-has-agreed-deal-us-take-10-equity-stake-2025-08-22/

    Intel up 5% today.

    Did Intel really "give" 10% to Trump?

    "The U.S. agreed to purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

    Basically, Intel sold the US government $9.4bn of shares for $8.9bn - so the government has saved itself $450m.

    Or, to put it another way, Intel has found someone willing to write a $9bn cheque at a time when it's not doing so good.
    On the other hand about 5 billion of that was apparently grant money Intel had apparently already been awarded under the CHIPS act but not yet paid -- so to some extent this is the government retrospectively changing the terms of the deal from "we'll write you a cheque" to "we'll write you a cheque but you need to give us shares for it"...
    Biden's or Trump's way, America invests in (and subsidises) its industries. We sell ours, and use their foreign competitors.
    Note that this is about investing in the biggest loser in the marketplace.
    It's about trying to save an important American company. It's about not letting ‘the market’ decide. See also Boeing among others.
    Intel has many significant problems. It has made a series of technical mistakes and poor business decisions over the last decade that have led it to be behind the curve.

    This investment will do little unless they start making very good technical and business decisions.
    Trump seems to have adopted the left wing corporatist policies of the 1970s. There is literally no economic policy failure he has not blundered into. The US economy is going to take years or even decades to recover from this spectacular incompetence.
    No, his policies are far more incoherent.
    And largely motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck his weight around.
    TBF, there were lots of 'left wing corporatist' politicians in the Seventies who were motivated by personal greed and/or desire to chuck their weight around. All of the Soviet Union's leadership, for a start. Then most of the Union bosses in this country.
    Mere pikers alongside Trump.
    Potemkin villages? Were these the 'new hospitals' that Boris promised. A lick of paint, a new kettle and behold the new hospital.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 80,586
    Needless to say, this is not normal.
    At all.

    Hegseth has now fired the CJCS, CNO, CGC, Air Force CoS and Vice CoS, Head NSA, and Head DIA
    https://x.com/John_ForemanCBE/status/1958951563743080644

    If you were planning to overturn the next election, this would be necessary prep.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,534
    MattW said:

    Lucy Connolly had some hard decisions to make.

    The Independent is reporting that she has been invited to meet officials from the Trump regime.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lucy-connolly-racist-tweet-prison-release-police-b2812635.html

    I'm not sure what restrictions she is under whilst serving the rest of her sentence on licence, but she's in danger of being trapped down the rabbit hole that has been built around her.

    She needs to move on rather than become a hero for the extremists. They will chew her up, exploit her, take the benefits, and then leave her destroyed.

    Unfortunately, that ship may already have sailed.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,705
    MattW said:

    Foxy said:

    rkrkrk said:

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    A bit more data here.

    Over 1000 fewer WTE GPs over the last decade, and average list size increase of 319 per GP over that decade and 44% of appointments the same day.

    https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/pressures-in-general-practice-data-analysis

    General Practice is really struggling, which in turn puts massive pressure on hospital emergency departments, and on Social Care.
    2000 patients per GP was far fewer than I would have naively guessed. Bit of course, the key thing is the distribution of those patients. 2000 people in good health is very different from 2000 people with lots of ailments.

    One of my friend/acquaintances will complete her GP training but apparently there is no job for her afterwards which seems bizarre to me.

    I'm not sure I see any great solutions, but we may get to the point where people's risk tolerance/expectation of service changes and they would prefer to see any kind of medical professional rather than a GP.
    There are many sides to the crisis in General Practice. As a hospital practitioner I do understand some of it, but not all.

    One of the more bizarre features to the crisis is that fully trained GPs cannot get jobs at the end of training, in part because there's only funding for non-medical practitioners. Neither is there Locum work to be found. A system more designed to export staff to the Antipodes would be hard to construct. Incidentally when I worked in NZ a few decades ago the average list size there was 1000 patients, so half of the UK workload.

    There are cultural changes too. GPs want to work in salaried posts, not in partnerships, so there's loss of leadership. Practices have amalgamated and enlarged, some even being several hundred doctors. One of the pleasures of General Practice used to be that strong connection to community and knowledge of patients from cradle to grave.

    Other factors are loss of clinical autonomy, overbearing regulation, patient expectations, the relative attractions of hospital careers (shorter hours and better career prospects than my generation) the increasingly technical nature of medicine, the move to telephone consultations etc etc.

    Can it, and should it survive as we have known it? I don't think so, but what replaces it? In many countries people self refer directly to specialists, and maybe that would be a model, but that too requires change. In particular specialists need to work outside hospitals and become more generalist themselves for that to work.
    I think not mentioned is that there has been a massive increase in the scope of work delivered by GPs.
    I did mention that in my first comment, that due to shorter patient stays, hospital staff have transferred lots of post op care and rehabilitation to General Practice, often without the resources such as District Nurses required.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 19,819
    edited August 23

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    Didn't the Lansley reforms put them in charge of commissioning NHS care? The weakest link in the whole system in command of it.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 9,012
    On GPs, just for balance. Me and Mrs Al have different GPs, and both are superb. Phones answered straight away, appointments whenever needed. Just last week, my better half had a health scare. Phoned GP at 8am. Appointment at 11am. Reassurance given, fault diagnosed, medicine picked up at pharmacy at 3pm.

    No political point here - they've been this good for 10 years. But I'm posting this because, I guess, we tend to hear much more about poor practice (which I don't doubt there's too much of) than good practice.
  • nico67nico67 Posts: 5,894
    Can anyone imagine the furore if Starmers officials lectured the USA on freedom of speech then met a released prisoner who was anti Trump .

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 52,705

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    Didn't the Lansley reforms put them in charge of commissioning NHS care? The weakest link in the whole system in command of it.
    Yes, though that was reversed some time ago. One effect was to divert leaders from direct patient care. In practice the PCTs had little real say, as they were obliged to fund NICE approved treatments leaving very little scope for local discretionary spend. A bit like local councils in many ways.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 75,084
    nico67 said:

    Can anyone imagine the furore if Starmers officials lectured the USA on freedom of speech then met a released prisoner who was anti Trump .

    Not likely, though, given only pro-Trump criminals get released.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 15,332
    MattW said:

    Lucy Connolly had some hard decisions to make.

    The Independent is reporting that she has been invited to meet officials from the Trump regime.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lucy-connolly-racist-tweet-prison-release-police-b2812635.html

    I'm not sure what restrictions she is under whilst serving the rest of her sentence on licence, but she's in danger of being trapped down the rabbit hole that has been built around her.

    She needs to move on rather than become a hero for the extremists. They will chew her up, exploit her, take the benefits, and then leave her destroyed.

    Additional conditions can be imposed - no idea - but the standard terms of release on licence include this catch all:

    (f) be of good behaviour, and not behave in a way which undermines the purposes of the release on licence, which are to protect the public, prevent re-offending and promote successful re-integration into the community;

    (g) not commit any offence.


    It can easily be argued that going around saying that despite my guilty plea to incitement I am the victim, really I am innocent because I ought to be allowed to promote a raging mob setting fire to people and please can I have my fee from GB News and a large advance on my book/series of articles breaches the sirit of (f). As does voluntarily meeting anyone connected with the pro soviet gangster oligarchy.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,409

    NEW THREAD

  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 56,214
    Foxy said:

    DavidL said:

    Eabhal said:

    Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    GP appointments problem has been in existence for 20+ years. However, in the meantime every other industry now has online booking, online chat, DMs, including getting medication from online drug providers. Its crazy we are still having the same discussion about GPs.

    My response to that is why wasn't there a problem 25 or 30 years ago? You could ring up your surgery or turn up in person to make an appointment, and most of the time there weren't any significant problems. You'd get an appointment within a reasonable time.
    Partly it is fewer WTE GPs per capita, partly an ageing population (demand goes up sharply with age) and partly that hospital staff dump more work on GPs via discharging patients much earlier. So demand exceeds supply. It really isn't difficult to figure out.

    Streetings plan is to divert funding away from hospitals and into primary care. He realises that is where 90% of NHS contact is.
    The average person in their 40s contributes a net £20k per year to the exchequer. The average person in their 90s costs the government £50k per year. Pretty much everything around our public services and public finances stems from this fact and the changing ratio of elderly to working age people.
    No, it doesn't. Demographic change is relatively minor reason for the increase in public spending. England's demographics in particular aren't too bad at all due to immigration over the last 30 years. In terms of tax, economic participation rates and hours worked are much bigger drivers than demographics.

    I don't think people can grasp just how quickly health spending is increasing. You'd have to have extraordinary increases in people aged 70+ to account for it (or babies), but demographic change is slow and incremental. Other spending is actually growing quite slowly or not at all, with the exception of political choices like defence.

    Demographics are a useful scapegoat for people trying to avoid confronting the current fiscal challenges in my experience. Ultimately it's a political choice.
    The really depressing thing is the poor to negative rates of productivity in the NHS. We are pumping more and more money in to get less back. This is completely unsustainable. We need to find ways of improving NHS productivity radically. There were some good experiments about this in the last year, for example mass production on the same kind of operations over a weekend, but I am not seeing the urgency or political drive from the top that is required.
    NHS productivity is improving again, but undeniably an issue (though on this I perhaps the legal profession has plenty of lessons to learn too!).

    Gimmicks like doing a lot of routine operations over a weekend don't really address the fundamental capacity issues. Why is this not possible during the week? Well the issues are, lack of beds, lack of anaesthetists, lack of theatre staff, lack of ITU support, interference from emergency work, high patient co-morbidity meaning that only healthy patients are suitable, and perhaps most of all lack of administrative staff to prep and book the patients. These sort of initiatives are the Potemkin villages of our time.
    Well that's disappointing. It wasn't hard to see, as a layman, that knee operations as an example could be more efficient when being done back to back and (your point really) all of the necessary support mechanisms are put in place. Of course if the quid pro quo is that such resources are not available during the week then the net gain may disappear.

    I would be interested in your suggestions. My anecdotal experience is that the NHS is a weird combination of people running flat out and others standing around doing next to nothing (in fairness the courts are very like this too). My daughter has an admin role in a local hospital which has won plaudits by having a team focused on setting up care packages for people from the moment that they arrive greatly reducing bed blocking once they have had their treatment. Other hospitals have come to have a look but again it seems to me that best practice like that really needs to be seized on and driven from the top.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,936

    Roger said:

    Ed Davey to make a statement on Gaza

    Taz said:

    Roger said:

    Taz said:

    Carney, a pretty crap Bank of England Governor, folds

    Canada cancels many reciprocal tariffs as Olive branch to Trump.

    https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/1958905577611932025?s=61

    Are you an economist? Most people seem to think he did a good job as BoE governor

    It's a bit like Rachel. My shares under her watchful eye have today reached an all-time high So I think she's a genius....

    Reevesy's made me rich!
    At least you have the decency to admit it’s not down to your investment skill. Not quite sure how she did it, as opposed to the respective management teams in the businesses, but she’s in such a hole at the moment she’ll take any credit.

    You’re not an economist, you made tampon ads (Ooooh bodyform, bodyform for you-hoo) and did record covers.
    No I didn't even get an O'level in economics.....

    Sometimes you have to soil yourself for $10,000 a day but what can you do?
    Did you do the Bodyform ad with a jingle that sounds remarkably like the voice of Madeline Bell, where the girls want some wind in their hair motoring so they angle grind the roof off their VW squareback?

    That was great, it was like a 1980s pop video. That was definitely worth 10,000 bucks a day. Hell, I almost bought the product.

    That reminds me "Dear Tampax, I have been smoking your product for a year now and I still can't swim or ride a bike. I demand a refund".
    I missed it. That made me LOL!
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