Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
Similarly (with a large bit of moor in the middle) Manchester to Leeds - encompassing Rochdale/Oldham and Huddersfield/Halifax/Bradford,
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
Can anyone see any chance at all of this not happening, given the apparent margins ?
I suppose if Burnham does something spectacularly unpopular in his first few weeks in office it might have an effect.
Not long ago, talk here presumed this would fall to Reform. Were people then being too pessimistic about Labour’s chances? Or has Farage ballsed this up?
It is because the voting system has changed from FPTP back to SV. The conventional wisdom is that Reform is not transfer-friendly so this favours Labour. Now, this is a very recent change. Had Burnham won Gorton & Denton, the mayoral election would be under FPTP which is why some pundits predicted a Reform win.
ETA the other reason is Reform moved its activists from Manchester to Clacton where there is a by-election due.
Me: he's going to be our Prime Minister on Monday.
My wife: oh.
Given the longevity of recent PMs, maybe it’s important to clarify that he’ll be PM on the subsequent days as well.
It's a great sign of how closely my wife listens to me, because I've mentioned "I can't believe Andy Burnham is going to be our next PM" several times in the last few weeks.
Good luck trying to fix social care ! Very difficult to do without a huge increase in spending and it’s hard to think of a policy that won’t annoy a section of the public . Maybe drop the Triple Lock and use that money saved which might mitigate some of the likely hysteria.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
For all whom I am sure are the many regular readers of Waitrose Food Magazine here on PB, I trust that you all found the photo on page 29 of this month’s edition very useful in clarifying what your plate should look like once you have made and then entirely eaten the dish, following the recommended recipe:
Burnham's speech did fine today. The task today was mostly to tell the party that this is their last chance to get back some popularity, and their only way of doing so is to follow his plan, which is already worked out so don't try to mess with it and I'm not going to tell you yet what it is, and leftie politics is completely free to do whatever you like as long as you agree with me and vote as I tell you. He already told them, in the Manchester speech, that everything important in "non negotiable". He means it. If he doesn't he is finished soon.
For all whom I am sure are the many regular readers of Waitrose Food Magazine here on PB, I trust that you all found the photo on page 29 of this month’s edition very useful in clarifying what your plate should look like once you have entirely eaten the dish made according to the recommended recipe:
Is that Leon's new gig? Most of his pb travel pictures were of an empty plate and a three-quarters full glass of beer.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
When I heard that stuff from Apple - "We couldn't make Apple Pro's in the US, because the screws are made in China" - yup, that's someone not serious. One container of small screws would last a year of production....
Edit - this is how Japan, China & Eastern Europe got started - they had "flat pack factories" at first.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
Similarly (with a large bit of moor in the middle) Manchester to Leeds - encompassing Rochdale/Oldham and Huddersfield/Halifax/Bradford,
I think if you drop a 100km ring around the South and the North, the most population you can contain is around 23 million for London, centred slightly north of London itself, and 20 million for the North, centred towards the southern end of the Peak District. Selective fast transit corridors across the Peak District and especially Manchester-Sheffield would be what supercharges agglomeration.
Elsewhere in Europe only the Ruhr and Moscow come close to this
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
That’s my point. I remember discussing it with Jessop who didn’t understand it,with respect to Hitachi, or didn’t realise they had moved to manafucture.
Hitachi, at first, was a screwdriver facility with a degree of local sourcing. That changed over time to perform primary manufacture.
I can remember in the eighties I worked at Lucas Lighting and the first Nissan vehicle lights were flat packed and assembled on site
Next phase local content parts made locally. My company moulded and finished on site.
For all whom I am sure are the many regular readers of Waitrose Food Magazine here on PB, I trust that you all found the photo on page 29 of this month’s edition very useful in clarifying what your plate should look like once you have entirely eaten the dish made according to the recommended recipe:
Is that Leon's new gig? Most of his pb travel pictures were of an empty plate and a three-quarters full glass of beer.
Which was always counter-intuitive, since we all know he would have finished the beer before he even touched the meal.
Good luck trying to fix social care ! Very difficult to do without a huge increase in spending and it’s hard to think of a policy that won’t annoy a section of the public . Maybe drop the Triple Lock and use that money saved which might mitigate some of the likely hysteria.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
What about the LMMA (pronounced Lemma) - the Liverpool-Manchester Metropolitan Axis?
Though the railway between the two does cross Chat Moss, which is not really much good for building on. There are small restoration projects ongoing and it is surprisingly back of beyond for where it is.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
When I heard that stuff from Apple - "We couldn't make Apple Pro's in the US, because the screws are made in China" - yup, that's someone not serious. One container of small screws would last a year of production....
Edit - this is how Japan, China & Eastern Europe got started - they had "flat pack factories" at first.
In return, Trump strong-armed Apple into buying American chips, coincidentally taking a 10 per cent stake in Intel.
You see, readers, the land of free enterprise is not above supporting its domestic industries, unlike Whitehall and Westminster which would cheerfully sell the lot.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
What about cost of energy ?
It's a combination - taxes, tax stability, legal stability, social support (healthcare and education), cost of energy, cost of transport.
If you get those right, the rest happens, almost by itself.
For all whom I am sure are the many regular readers of Waitrose Food Magazine here on PB, I trust that you all found the photo on page 29 of this month’s edition very useful in clarifying what your plate should look like once you have made and then entirely eaten the dish, following the recommended recipe:
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
Which is exactly what the Japanese OEMs and Hitachi rail did.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
Can anyone see any chance at all of this not happening, given the apparent margins ?
I suppose if Burnham does something spectacularly unpopular in his first few weeks in office it might have an effect.
Not long ago, talk here presumed this would fall to Reform. Were people then being too pessimistic about Labour’s chances? Or has Farage ballsed this up?
It is because the voting system has changed from FPTP back to SV. The conventional wisdom is that Reform is not transfer-friendly so this favours Labour. Now, this is a very recent change. Had Burnham won Gorton & Denton, the mayoral election would be under FPTP which is why some pundits predicted a Reform win.
ETA the other reason is Reform moved its activists from Manchester to Clacton where there is a by-election due.
No, while the change back to SV probably helps Labour, Labour are not ahead because the voting system has changed. They would be ahead anyway. The poll shows Labour ahead of Reform 38% to 24% on first preferences, in a system that does not require voters to make a tactical choice so a lot can indulge themselves by giving their first preference support to the Green. By contrast, a simple FPTP election would force that tactical choice and many would vote tactically for Labour who would then poll above 38%.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
What about cost of energy ?
It's a combination - taxes, tax stability, legal stability, social support (healthcare and education), cost of energy, cost of transport.
If you get those right, the rest happens, almost by itself.
I'm quite a traditionalist when it comes to county geography. But I can completely see the reason for this: Rutland is far too tiny a population for the services a county is expected to provide.
What I think is needed is one of two things - either: - a way of disassociating county identity from administrative geography - this really shouldn't be that hard to do: a few signs in the right places, institutional continuity, etc - so I could say 'I live in Cheshire' while having my bins collected by Trafford Council. This isn't the snobbery it's often perceived as; it's just a desire for continuity and local identity. I want to be able to aske a question like 'how many league football clubs have ever played home games in Cheshire' without a long footnote explaining what I mean by 'Cheshire'. I want to be able to answer 'where is Kirkby Lonsdale' with the same answer I would have given 20 or 50 or 100 years ago. Or: - a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units for the half-a-million-to-three-million population units of territory. I could draw you up dozens of these right now. But we'd then have to agree to stick with them completely a la American states for the next 500 years at least and stop fucking tinkering.
Point 2: a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units We did that in 1973/4, introducing concepts like Avon and Humberside. It was not popular and was reverted in 1997.
As Marquee Mark of this parish will tell you, for the purposes of recording moths and butterflies (as well as other biological and scientific observations) there is a system of vice-counties, started in 1852 and based on the old county system with each vice county having its own official Recorder. I am in VC53 - South Lincolnshire
Damn, I had actually forgotten about them! Thank you.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
"We can't make X here, because the screws still come from China".
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
This is spot on: you've got to start at the end of the value chain, and work back.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
Similarly (with a large bit of moor in the middle) Manchester to Leeds - encompassing Rochdale/Oldham and Huddersfield/Halifax/Bradford,
I think if you drop a 100km ring around the South and the North, the most population you can contain is around 23 million for London, centred slightly north of London itself, and 20 million for the North, centred towards the southern end of the Peak District. Selective fast transit corridors across the Peak District and especially Manchester-Sheffield would be what supercharges agglomeration.
Elsewhere in Europe only the Ruhr and Moscow come close to this
Feels very old Labour. Is he going to re-open the coal mines?
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
Didn't he pinch that phrase from Sainsburys - good food for all of us?
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
What about cost of energy ?
Industrial producers tend to be less screwed over by UK energy policy than you'd think, because they organize their own power - buying gas on the wholesale markets and generating power.
The problem with subsidizing energy prices directly is that firms will tend to abuse it, by arbitraging the local market.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
Similarly (with a large bit of moor in the middle) Manchester to Leeds - encompassing Rochdale/Oldham and Huddersfield/Halifax/Bradford,
I think if you drop a 100km ring around the South and the North, the most population you can contain is around 23 million for London, centred slightly north of London itself, and 20 million for the North, centred towards the southern end of the Peak District. Selective fast transit corridors across the Peak District and especially Manchester-Sheffield would be what supercharges agglomeration.
Elsewhere in Europe only the Ruhr and Moscow come close to this
We were chatting here the other day about the possibility of using cheap Norwegian tunnelling methods to provide a new link between Sheffield and Manchester. It makes compelling economic sense. We should absolutely do this, and it should be on Burnham's month one agenda.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
What about cost of energy ?
Industrial producers tend to be less screwed over by UK energy policy than you'd think, because they organize their own power - buying gas on the wholesale markets and generating power.
The problem with subsidizing energy prices directly is that firms will tend to abuse it, by arbitraging the local market.
My friend, the farmer with a solar farm, is getting the local councillors all upset with his idea of selling cheap 'leech directly to the mini-business centre (converted old stable yard) he has. His idea is, once the battery setup is running, to provide cheap 'leech included in their rent.
For some reason, this is really upsetting those professing green views. Not sure how that works.
Robert's next project after the Vanilla migration.
Kimi K3 is a historic moment in the development of AI—but it’s not exactly downloadable “to your laptop.” In fact, few organizations will be able to local-host this capability.
What is beyond weak? It’s delusion. This is Labours Boris Johnson moment.
What we got from Burnham is a lefty version of Trump/Farage Populist Delusion. And PB have sussed it and satirising it perfectly.
The Bring Back Black Forest Gateaux Manifesto. Very quick this blog, as a hive mind.
It’s been said this was just Andy talking to his party, but this was full fat Burnham government, because this is how they actually see it:
“remember how it used to be? and was it not so much better than this, before the ideological decisions were made to switch on de-industrialisation, switch on globalisation, switch on privatisation, leaving Labour areas and Labour voters poorer for the wrong headed ideological decisions that turned those things on?”
It’s not just pathetic, it’s actually dangerous. Our country is actually under threat, when people who see it like this hold the knobs of power.
I'm quite a traditionalist when it comes to county geography. But I can completely see the reason for this: Rutland is far too tiny a population for the services a county is expected to provide.
What I think is needed is one of two things - either: - a way of disassociating county identity from administrative geography - this really shouldn't be that hard to do: a few signs in the right places, institutional continuity, etc - so I could say 'I live in Cheshire' while having my bins collected by Trafford Council. This isn't the snobbery it's often perceived as; it's just a desire for continuity and local identity. I want to be able to aske a question like 'how many league football clubs have ever played home games in Cheshire' without a long footnote explaining what I mean by 'Cheshire'. I want to be able to answer 'where is Kirkby Lonsdale' with the same answer I would have given 20 or 50 or 100 years ago. Or: - a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units for the half-a-million-to-three-million population units of territory. I could draw you up dozens of these right now. But we'd then have to agree to stick with them completely a la American states for the next 500 years at least and stop fucking tinkering.
Point 2: a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units We did that in 1973/4, introducing concepts like Avon and Humberside. It was not popular and was reverted in 1997.
As Marquee Mark of this parish will tell you, for the purposes of recording moths and butterflies (as well as other biological and scientific observations) there is a system of vice-counties, started in 1852 and based on the old county system with each vice county having its own official Recorder. I am in VC53 - South Lincolnshire
Damn, I had actually forgotten about them! Thank you.
VC63 - South-west Yorkshire calling...
Our boundary reflects that even if we do have the nonsense of "South Yorkshire" it was all really West Riding. Including Saddleworth...
For all whom I am sure are the many regular readers of Waitrose Food Magazine here on PB, I trust that you all found the photo on page 29 of this month’s edition very useful in clarifying what your plate should look like once you have made and then entirely eaten the dish, following the recommended recipe:
There's a picture of the uneaten meal on pp 24-25
So there is!
At least my cunning plan to unearth fellow avid readers of Waitrose’s monthly food magazine has landed at least one direct hit….
If you are interested in what brings manufacturing to an area, you may want to look at which states are successful in doing so in the US. (And which aren't.)
One incentive that I approve of: Some states will train the technicians that a new factory will need, often in existing community colleges.
I'm quite a traditionalist when it comes to county geography. But I can completely see the reason for this: Rutland is far too tiny a population for the services a county is expected to provide.
What I think is needed is one of two things - either: - a way of disassociating county identity from administrative geography - this really shouldn't be that hard to do: a few signs in the right places, institutional continuity, etc - so I could say 'I live in Cheshire' while having my bins collected by Trafford Council. This isn't the snobbery it's often perceived as; it's just a desire for continuity and local identity. I want to be able to aske a question like 'how many league football clubs have ever played home games in Cheshire' without a long footnote explaining what I mean by 'Cheshire'. I want to be able to answer 'where is Kirkby Lonsdale' with the same answer I would have given 20 or 50 or 100 years ago. Or: - a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units for the half-a-million-to-three-million population units of territory. I could draw you up dozens of these right now. But we'd then have to agree to stick with them completely a la American states for the next 500 years at least and stop fucking tinkering.
Point 2: a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units We did that in 1973/4, introducing concepts like Avon and Humberside. It was not popular and was reverted in 1997.
As Marquee Mark of this parish will tell you, for the purposes of recording moths and butterflies (as well as other biological and scientific observations) there is a system of vice-counties, started in 1852 and based on the old county system with each vice county having its own official Recorder. I am in VC53 - South Lincolnshire
Damn, I had actually forgotten about them! Thank you.
How about Post Code areas? I'd be in Guildford province, neighbouring ones would be Southampton, Reading, Twickenham, Kingston.
Good luck trying to fix social care ! Very difficult to do without a huge increase in spending and it’s hard to think of a policy that won’t annoy a section of the public . Maybe drop the Triple Lock and use that money saved which might mitigate some of the likely hysteria.
Where’s the money ?
In people’s assets. Be they homes and pensions.
If you go to a double lock that saves upto 10 billion a year by 2030 . Use that to help fund social care which in turn helps the NHS because of all the current bed blocking .
Of course people will have to pay something towards it . I fear though that Burnham will regret emphasising social care as many people just seem to think the money can be found magically or some one else can pick up the bill .
I'm quite a traditionalist when it comes to county geography. But I can completely see the reason for this: Rutland is far too tiny a population for the services a county is expected to provide.
What I think is needed is one of two things - either: - a way of disassociating county identity from administrative geography - this really shouldn't be that hard to do: a few signs in the right places, institutional continuity, etc - so I could say 'I live in Cheshire' while having my bins collected by Trafford Council. This isn't the snobbery it's often perceived as; it's just a desire for continuity and local identity. I want to be able to aske a question like 'how many league football clubs have ever played home games in Cheshire' without a long footnote explaining what I mean by 'Cheshire'. I want to be able to answer 'where is Kirkby Lonsdale' with the same answer I would have given 20 or 50 or 100 years ago. Or: - a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units for the half-a-million-to-three-million population units of territory. I could draw you up dozens of these right now. But we'd then have to agree to stick with them completely a la American states for the next 500 years at least and stop fucking tinkering.
Point 2: a complete year zero where we abandon the old and have completely new administrative units We did that in 1973/4, introducing concepts like Avon and Humberside. It was not popular and was reverted in 1997.
1) Ceremonial counties - but they are half-arsed in their presence, trampled over by the administrative units and don't even match the traditional counties
2) It would have worked as a year zero only if it was completely different to what went before. Calling something 'Lancashire' but it just referring to the rump in the middle was a worst-of-all-worlds scenario. It was dressed up as continuity but it really wasn't - geographically, I think only Cornwall, Shropshire and Wolverhampton were untouched. But it wasn't sufficiently new that new identities could be formed even over years and years. A reflection: we were slightly obsessed back then (and indeed remain so) with separating the rural from the urban. In terms of forming an area with an identity, I think this is unhelpful.
I mean you argued that by any score Denton wasn't Manchester some time ago, which isn't unfair, but if you want permanence in your governance structures, I'd say the folk memory of this structure is actually still relevant to what many people think Manchester actually comprises:
What is beyond weak? It’s delusion. This is Labours Boris Johnson moment.
What we got from Burnham is a lefty version of Trump/Farage Populist Delusion. And PB have sussed it and satirising it perfectly.
The Bring Back Black Forest Gateaux Manifesto. Very quick this blog, as a hive mind.
It’s been said this was just Andy talking to his party, but this was full fat Burnham government, because this is how they actually see it:
“remember how it used to be? and was it not so much better than this, before the ideological decisions were made to switch on de-industrialisation, switch on globalisation, switch on privatisation, leaving Labour areas and Labour voters poorer for the wrong headed ideological decisions that turned those things on?”
It’s not just pathetic, it’s actually dangerous. Our country is actually under threat, when people who see it like this hold the knobs of power.
Remember how it used to be? and was it not so much better than this... has been Farage's refrain throughout his career, and an unspoken reason why 2016 happened and also why it failed. Because even a referendum vote can't reverse the process of ageing. Burnham is playing a similar tune, but on 6 Music rather than the Light Programme.
I happen to agree with him that we lost control because we have spent decades selling off the control we had. So what's the plan to earn it back? And does it have any connection to the talents and resources we have now, rather then the ones we remember from the Good Old Days (that weren't that good, really)?
Good luck trying to fix social care ! Very difficult to do without a huge increase in spending and it’s hard to think of a policy that won’t annoy a section of the public . Maybe drop the Triple Lock and use that money saved which might mitigate some of the likely hysteria.
Where’s the money ?
In people’s assets. Be they homes and pensions.
If you go to a double lock that saves upto 10 billion a year by 2030 . Use that to help fund social care which in turn helps the NHS because of all the current bed blocking .
Of course people will have to pay something towards it . I fear though that Burnham will regret emphasising social care as many people just seem to think the money can be found magically or some one else can pick up the bill .
It should be a single lock, not a ratchett. Pick your poison and stick with it.
Robert's next project after the Vanilla migration.
Kimi K3 is a historic moment in the development of AI—but it’s not exactly downloadable “to your laptop.” In fact, few organizations will be able to local-host this capability.
Comments
If you want to change things, it will take time.
Stop sneering at "flat pack factories" and "token assembly" - that's what it will be at first. Until the centre of gravity shifts and you move down the supply chains.
Let's start with the obvious. To invest in a factory, you need to be sure that the tariffs will last. How do you know that a future government won't -say- enter into a trade deal with China, which gives British banks and lawyers access to the Chinese market, but leaves you high and dry?
And then there's the second element: what exactly are you putting tariffs on? In the US, they put tariffs on steel, to try and protect the domestic steel industry. The impact of this was to make car manufacturing more expensive (because steel is now more expensive), and therefore reduce demand for US car exports.
Tariffs distort the market, because they make certain products more expensive, and anything which is a derivative of that product will in turn become more expensive.
If you really want to stimulate domestic manufacturing, then the solution that the Germans and Koreans and others have gone with is cheap finance. Now, this obviously distorts the market too (especially as it can result in a cycle where countries attempt to outdo each other in the generosity of their loans), but on balance, it's a less destructive and more effective way of stimulating manufacturing that tariffs.
ETA the other reason is Reform moved its activists from Manchester to Clacton where there is a by-election due.
Edit - this is how Japan, China & Eastern Europe got started - they had "flat pack factories" at first.
Elsewhere in Europe only the Ruhr and Moscow come close to this
Try it:
https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=52.09785&long=-0.67017&distance_km=100
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
Hitachi, at first, was a screwdriver facility with a degree of local sourcing. That changed over time to perform primary manufacture.
I can remember in the eighties I worked at Lucas Lighting and the first Nissan vehicle lights were flat packed and assembled on site
Next phase local content parts made locally. My company moulded and finished on site.
Can’t run before you walk
In people’s assets. Be they homes and pensions.
I think the original line was floated on brash?
You see, readers, the land of free enterprise is not above supporting its domestic industries, unlike Whitehall and Westminster which would cheerfully sell the lot.
If you get those right, the rest happens, almost by itself.
"But are you not entertained?"
It's nailed on.
But I think that's it: Ruhr valley, the Low Countries, Moscow, the North West and London.
Paris is 15m. Milan and environs 11m, Madrid 8.5m.
The problem with subsidizing energy prices directly is that firms will tend to abuse it, by arbitraging the local market.
We should absolutely do this, and it should be on Burnham's month one agenda.
For some reason, this is really upsetting those professing green views. Not sure how that works.
Kimi K3 is a historic moment in the development of AI—but it’s not exactly downloadable “to your laptop.” In fact, few organizations will be able to local-host this capability.
Just to hold a 2.8T parameter model in silicon (and run it at FP16 quantization), you’d need 5.6TB of VRAM..
https://x.com/RyanFedasiuk/status/2077844378026938638
What we got from Burnham is a lefty version of Trump/Farage Populist Delusion. And PB have sussed it and satirising it perfectly.
The Bring Back Black Forest Gateaux Manifesto. Very quick this blog, as a hive mind.
It’s been said this was just Andy talking to his party, but this was full fat Burnham government, because this is how they actually see it:
“remember how it used to be? and was it not so much better than this, before the ideological decisions were made to switch on de-industrialisation, switch on globalisation, switch on privatisation, leaving Labour areas and Labour voters poorer for the wrong headed ideological decisions that turned those things on?”
It’s not just pathetic, it’s actually dangerous. Our country is actually under threat, when people who see it like this hold the knobs of power.
Our boundary reflects that even if we do have the nonsense of "South Yorkshire" it was all really West Riding.
Including Saddleworth...
At least my cunning plan to unearth fellow avid readers of Waitrose’s monthly food magazine has landed at least one direct hit….
One incentive that I approve of: Some states will train the technicians that a new factory will need, often in existing community colleges.
Of course people will have to pay something towards it . I fear though that Burnham will regret emphasising social care as many people just seem to think the money can be found magically or some one else can pick up the bill .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_(ancient_parish)?wprov=sfla1
I happen to agree with him that we lost control because we have spent decades selling off the control we had. So what's the plan to earn it back? And does it have any connection to the talents and resources we have now, rather then the ones we remember from the Good Old Days (that weren't that good, really)?
What Ryan means is that to run it at usable speed, you need that much VRAM l.
Someone is bound to get it running off an SSD at 0.1tps in the next few weeks