There's only one party that REALLY wants the referendum - and it ain't UKIP. And how exactly do you claim any credit for delivering it - with one MP? Risible.
The voters knew the only the way to have a referendum on the EU was to vote Tory.
Oh come on, Mark, that really is taking the partisan line too far. Cameron needs the EU Referendum like a hole in the head and had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
The Conservatives have preserved their internal cohesion for thirty years by NOT having to make a decision on EU membership. Yes, Cameron won the election and must deliver on the Referendum but he also has to keep the Conservative Party together and he will have to take a view on LEAVE or REMAIN and argue that while members of his own party appear on both platforms.
The 1975 Referendum was a big step on the road to Labour's schism in 1981.
Internal cohesion was diciest on Europe from c.1988 to c.2001.
Over that timescale (or way back to 1973, if you prefer) the Tory party has moved from being the most pro-EEC party, to pro-single market, to pro-ERM, to wait-and-see on the euro, to no euro for next parliament, to never the euro, to not let matters rest here, to renegotiate and now to half the party wanting to quit the EU outright.
The direction of travel is pretty clear to me, and I don't think the eurosceptic journey is yet complete.
JosiasJessop I know you are very in favour of the railways and know more about them than I. But on your points about driverless cars yes we do not know all the answers but the implications are far reaching. Here are a few guesses FWIW:- 1. We will see most rented as taxis. Why own two boxes on your drive when you can rent for no capex commitment and drink whatever you want. 2. The car industry may find it reduces them to producing a few bland range of cars. Maybe only 3-5 global producers. 3. Motorways will turn into long convoys of cars travelling at higher average speeds.
Mr Eagles: I don't forget it at all. You have to wonder WHY Reckless did what he did, regardless of subsequent events.
Reckless and Carswell took principled stances that could have ruined their careers, you could argue that is what has happened. Adonis has done something completely different, encouraged by Osborne and applauded by tribalists.
It really is no wonder why faith in politics in general is at an all time low.
Reckless and Carswell tried to do as much damage as they could to the Tory Party - and readily chugged the Kool-AId dished out by Farage in pint glasses. How was that supposed to raise the "faith in politics"? They both bought a shiny new product that turned out to be a dud. Boo hoo.
Perhaps Carswell can "do an Adonis" if he ever wants to have a meaningful career in politics.
Are you suggesting that Adonis has had a meaningful career in politics?
had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
That may be so, but the fact still remains that once the referendum became Conservative policy, the Kippers (a) tried to argue that Cameron couldn't be trusted on it, and (b) spent the next two years trying to sabotage the Conservative majority needed to deliver it. If they were serious about wanting a referendum and an eventual exit, they would have advised people to vote Conservative and spent the time preparing the Brexit case. Their actions and strategy demonstrate that they didn't want the referendum to happen.
I don't think that's right. If we had more UKIP seats and fewer Conservative ones, the referendum wouldn't have been in any more danger. I think Farage offered a deal to stand down in most seats in exchange for getting a free run at a bunch. His offer was unrealistically high, but he would have been amenable in negotiation.
I don't think UKIP were being duplicitous. I think they genuinely believed UKIP doing better was the best way to get a winnable referendum. They were just wrong, and failed to account for how much the party can hold Cameron to account.
I swung the other way: when Miliband was seen skulking into Brand's gaff at night, I saw it as a sign that Labour believed that they were in trouble (and I think I said so at the time). A sane leader wouldn't go anywhere near Brand unless they were in trouble - Brand'll only get involved to improve his own brand, not the party.
It was a sign of desperation. If Brand had got involved a year or eighteen months before the election it would have been better, as it would have shown that he had some commitment, and he could have been used better by the Labour campaign. But a few days?
It was a report on Labour List days before the GE, about the reasons for the Brand visit that prompted me to put a few quid on a Conservative majority.
Mr Eagles: I don't forget it at all. You have to wonder WHY Reckless did what he did, regardless of subsequent events.
Reckless and Carswell took principled stances that could have ruined their careers, you could argue that is what has happened. Adonis has done something completely different, encouraged by Osborne and applauded by tribalists.
It really is no wonder why faith in politics in general is at an all time low.
Reckless and Carswell tried to do as much damage as they could to the Tory Party - and readily chugged the Kool-AId dished out by Farage in pint glasses. How was that supposed to raise the "faith in politics"? They both bought a shiny new product that turned out to be a dud. Boo hoo.
Perhaps Carswell can "do an Adonis" if he ever wants to have a meaningful career in politics.
I know 99% of the posts on here are partisan point scoring, but do you honestly believe that members of party that has campaigned for us to leave the EU getting a referendum is not a meaningful achievement in politics? Especially if the referendum were won (30% chance at the mo)
There's only one party that REALLY wants the referendum - and it ain't UKIP. And how exactly do you claim any credit for delivering it - with one MP? Risible.
The voters knew the only the way to have a referendum on the EU was to vote Tory.
It wouldn't have been on offer it wasn't for UKIP
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
Well there wouldn't. Why would there have been?
You can LOL all you like, but your just making my point for me about partisan point scoring
Only if the new Commission is backed up with cash on a reliable basis. We don't spend enough on infrastructure, mainly because governments spend too much on current spending, like tax credits.
I'm a big fan of Gov't capital expenditure, as rates are so bloody low for the Gov't to borrow on. I'd take a chainsaw to current expenditure though !
Rates are low because our government acknowledges that still having the largest deficit in the EU is a major problem and the context in which every decision has to be taken. Cutting loose on capital spending would change that fast.
In the real world which Corbyn refuses to join the deficit is pretty much everything. We are missing an opportunity but we really missed it in the period 2002-2008.
The referendum became Conservative policy because it was the right thing to do - and was a huge dividing line between the Tories , who trusted the voters with a say, and Labour and the LibDems who did not.
had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
That may be so, but the fact still remains that once the referendum became Conservative policy, the Kippers (a) tried to argue that Cameron couldn't be trusted on it, and (b) spent the next two years trying to sabotage the Conservative majority needed to deliver it. If they were serious about wanting a referendum and an eventual exit, they would have advised people to vote Conservative and spent the time preparing the Brexit case. Their actions and strategy demonstrate that they didn't want the referendum to happen.
Only if the new Commission is backed up with cash on a reliable basis. We don't spend enough on infrastructure, mainly because governments spend too much on current spending, like tax credits.
I'm a big fan of Gov't capital expenditure, as rates are so bloody low for the Gov't to borrow on. I'd take a chainsaw to current expenditure though !
The point (again) is that if our structural deficit is eliminated then we can plan for the infrastructure investment expenditure we need over a long term. I wouldld like to think that by living within our long term means then we can sustain ourselves within the normal economic cycles with the usual regulators and cyclical deficit spending and surpluses. It would be nice to think that growth within our economy could pay of a bit of debt as well!
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
That may be so, but the fact still remains that once the referendum became Conservative policy, the Kippers (a) tried to argue that Cameron couldn't be trusted on it, and (b) spent the next two years trying to sabotage the Conservative majority needed to deliver it. If they were serious about wanting a referendum and an eventual exit, they would have advised people to vote Conservative and spent the time preparing the Brexit case. Their actions and strategy demonstrate that they didn't want the referendum to happen.
You really should stop supposing that your idea of what other people think is what other people actually think
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM because I thought, and his actions on purdah, the wording and ministerial behaviour seem to back me up, that he would use the levers of power that come with being PM to influence the result in an underhand way.
Luckily enough for BOOers, events since May have made it almost impossible for someone pretending to be open minded about it to recommend 'Remain'... Swings and roundabouts
Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 35, this is my first Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.
It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2015. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Manchester bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.
This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.
"this is my first Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this." Err?
The first conference after an epoch defining win will have to be a pretty contented one!!
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
So a double win for Osborne.
I wonder if Mandy could be tempted with a new job - that would be the final nail..
My perspective is partly based on the 1997 experience of policies that we'd opposed tooth and nail in opposition suddenly seeming more reasonable to Labour Ministers, and Conservative ex-Ministers suddenly finding reasons to oppose them. One can see both of those as examples of the cynicism of politics, but they also reflect the fact the making speeches is one thing, but in practice the margin of sensible variation is narrower than one pretends or perhaps thinks.
This is explained by the political version of Efficient Market Hypothesis, where there can't be any policies that both sound good and work well because if there were they'd already have been done.
Nobody's interested in policies that sound bad and work badly, so what's left is the government trying to implement things that sound bad and work well without anybody noticing them doing it, while the opposition argues for things that sound good and work badly.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
JosiasJessop I know you are very in favour of the railways and know more about them than I. But on your points about driverless cars yes we do not know all the answers but the implications are far reaching. Here are a few guesses FWIW:- 1. We will see most rented as taxis. Why own two boxes on your drive when you can rent for no capex commitment and drink whatever you want. 2. The car industry may find it reduces them to producing a few bland range of cars. Maybe only 3-5 global producers. 3. Motorways will turn into long convoys of cars travelling at higher average speeds.
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
But if it can be done:
1) I think you're correct. But for most people cars are a convenience item: I choose to go to the supermarket with a few minutes notice. There'll also be a problem with the rented model with demand at various times of the day.
2) The key to driverless cars and the business model may not actually be the driverless car tech, but the data that will come with it. The world's biggest driverless car company might not actually make cars, but deal with the big data that comes out of it.
3) Agree, but what happens when they get off the motorway? The point-to-point model breaks down when one of those points is under massive demand, for instance a city centre at rush hour. Where are the driverless cars parked?
As I've mentioned before, it's much more likely that you will enter a journey you require: say from here outside Cambridge to Wimbledon. The online booking system will then take my requirements (e.g. number of changes I'm willing to tolerate, price, ETA etc) and come up with the best route.
For instance a driverless car might pick me up and drive me to Waterbeach (because Cambridge's traffic is busy at the relevant time), where I get on a train to London. At Kings Cross an automated taxi might take me to my destination, or it might advise me to take the tube, where a driverless car will be awaiting my arrival.
None of the problems are insurmountable, but they will all change the way we interact with transport. Perversely, it might increase the need for public transport ...
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
So a double win for Osborne.
I wonder if Mandy could be tempted with a new job - that would be the final nail..
Arguably the most influential Sci-Fi writer on today's culture is Timothy Zahn.
Jeff vandermeer, Ernest Cline, john scalzi, Emily St. John Mandel, Liu Cixin, Ann Leckie, and Brandon Sanderson seem to be the big names these days. So it's postmodernism, gaming and retro-gaming, China, gender identity, and ripoffs of Harry Potter. Welcome to the 2010s...:-(
Brandon Sanderson is one of the most successful writers today of straightforward good vs evil fantasy. But the genre as a whole has moved in the direction of moral ambiguity. Main characters are anti heroes, or villain protagonists. They do morally dubious things and good and evil are confused.
The problem is lesser authors try for that new trend too hard, to the point there is nothing interesting about them, no ups and downs, no peaks at all, just one note in a different way in the name of presenting as more complex and deep, without any actual meaning or depth, just grim, pretentious dribble.
Some of them need to remember that to have real tragedy we also need to see some happiness or levity, or some idea it is possible, so the darkness and moral ambiguity hits harder. If the reaction to everything is the same, and everyone has no positive qualities, how can I care when things happen to Them?
I'm not a fan, clearly. Why done right, it's great. When done poorly, it's terrible.
...something like HS2 is essentially a choice between alternative short/long-term costs and benefits, on which people from either party can reasonably come to different views. What's needed is sober analysis, and I don't begrudge him the chance to do it, nor would I prefer that we had directly-elected heads of commissions to investigate infrastructure - it's a predominantly technical job. There is some political spin in the announcement, of course, but that's not a big deal in the longer run.
It is also a bet on the infrastructure required for the late 2020s/30s and 40s. Just as we enter the age of driverless cars when for point to point transport (what we need), for distances under 100 or 120 miles, a driverless car will be for most people (outside a few city centres) the optimum way to travel.
In telecoms it is the last mile problem, for transport it is the 20-50 mile problem getting to the few hubs that the HS2 infrastructure will have.
I swung the other way: when Miliband was seen skulking into Brand's gaff at night, I saw it as a sign that Labour believed that they were in trouble (and I think I said so at the time). A sane leader wouldn't go anywhere near Brand unless they were in trouble - Brand'll only get involved to improve his own brand, not the party.
It was a sign of desperation. If Brand had got involved a year or eighteen months before the election it would have been better, as it would have shown that he had some commitment, and he could have been used better by the Labour campaign. But a few days?
It was a desperate act by Ed and one of many bloody stupid ideas by Lucy Powell throughhout the general election campaign – I wonder where she is now?????
Let’s be clear: this is a mad one. You won’t have heard it anywhere else, but you can take it from me. At the age of 35, this is my first Party conference, and I’ve never been to one quite like this.
It’s in the nature of collective hysteria that no single act can be adduced to prove its existence. But there is a fin de siecle, self-destructive, decadent craziness about Conference 2015. Somewhere in the wads of twenty somethings and thirtywouldbes jamming the chintzy Manchester bars long after they’re normally silent lurks the jitterbugging desperation of the Twenties before the Crash, Berlin between the wars, London as Imperial Glory died with its queen. The collective psyche of this group of individuals who’ve never had it so good has rarely been so uncertain.
This is not a columnar conceit. I do not really have a thesis; no point to prove. I can only tentatively explain this atmosphere. But nor am I wrong. This mood is as real as the grief in the church. I am simply reporting what is here.
There's a joke I'm not quite getting in here somewhere
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
So Labour's deepening paranoia is a win for Corbyn? Hmmmm...some things just aren't worth winning.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
I didn't want either of the two Europhiles to be PM.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
Perhaps he wanted a referendum, but not as much as he didn't want Cameron as PM.
Perhaps he thought a weak Miliband government might collapse in a few months and a more eurosceptic Conservative leader could arise.
Perhaps is just wrong, rather than trying to sabotage things.
The referendum became Conservative policy because it was the right thing to do - and was a huge dividing line between the Tories , who trusted the voters with a say, and Labour and the LibDems who did not.
had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
That may be so, but the fact still remains that once the referendum became Conservative policy, the Kippers (a) tried to argue that Cameron couldn't be trusted on it, and (b) spent the next two years trying to sabotage the Conservative majority needed to deliver it. If they were serious about wanting a referendum and an eventual exit, they would have advised people to vote Conservative and spent the time preparing the Brexit case. Their actions and strategy demonstrate that they didn't want the referendum to happen.
Garbage. Cameron never wanted a referendum and still doesn't. he knows that no matter how much he tries to fix it so that In wins he is still subject to external events beyond his control. The only people who pretend that he is in anyway neutral or would ever consider recommending Leave are those who - like him - want us to stay in no matter what. Cameron was forced into the referendum decision and still doesn't trust the voters to deliver the 'right' result.
had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
That may be so, but the fact still remains that once the referendum became Conservative policy, the Kippers (a) tried to argue that Cameron couldn't be trusted on it, and (b) spent the next two years trying to sabotage the Conservative majority needed to deliver it. If they were serious about wanting a referendum and an eventual exit, they would have advised people to vote Conservative and spent the time preparing the Brexit case. Their actions and strategy demonstrate that they didn't want the referendum to happen.
You really should stop supposing that your idea of what other people think is what other people actually think
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM because I thought, and his actions on purdah, the wording and ministerial behaviour seem to back me up, that he would use the levers of power that come with being PM to influence the result in an underhand way.
Luckily enough for BOOers, events since May have made it almost impossible for someone pretending to be open minded about it to recommend 'Remain'... Swings and roundabouts
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
So a double win for Osborne.
The apparaent contradiction is because if Corbyn gets what he wats, vis, the annilihation of the moderate wing of the Labour party (starting from the right and working inwards), then he will deal a mortal blow to the Labour Party, as Osborne wants.
It is the oddity of the Corbyn aim here which is confusing things.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
My perspective is partly based on the 1997 experience of policies that we'd opposed tooth and nail in opposition suddenly seeming more reasonable to Labour Ministers, and Conservative ex-Ministers suddenly finding reasons to oppose them. One can see both of those as examples of the cynicism of politics, but they also reflect the fact the making speeches is one thing, but in practice the margin of sensible variation is narrower than one pretends or perhaps thinks.
This is explained by the political version of Efficient Market Hypothesis, where there can't be any policies that both sound good and work well because if there were they'd already have been done.
Nobody's interested in policies that sound bad and work badly, so what's left is the government trying to implement things that sound bad and work well without anybody noticing them doing it, while the opposition argues for things that sound good and work badly.
This hypothesis fails because society and the electorate change every decade, meaning that how well things work and how popular things are change over that time. Given that just one government may have been in charge over the previous decade, there's not much of a market to it.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
Perhaps he wanted a referendum, but not as much as he didn't want Cameron as PM.
Perhaps he thought a weak Miliband government might collapse in a few months and a more eurosceptic Conservative leader could arise.
Perhaps is just wrong, rather than trying to sabotage things.
Perhaps he wants his cake and to eat it. He has nailed his colours to a rotten mast.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
No one said the Kippers had to have thought out their position ex-ante.
Stopped clocks, etc.
I have no doubt that the constant Kipper pressure resulted in the referendum pledge. I think UKIP is very far from a political party but as a pressure group (with an attached repository for discontented/like-minded votes) they did extremely well in forcing Cam to offer a referendum.
Don't forget this was before GO's superman-ness and was in the era of Cam's more flip-flops than a beach in Ibiza.
He agrees with the increasingly bizarre claims of Fraser Nelson - but for different reasons.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
So a double win for Osborne.
I wonder if Mandy could be tempted with a new job - that would be the final nail..
Mandelson is a Labour Party man, albeit on the right of the party, like Gordon Brown.
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
Josias - yes there will be a role for public transport particularly within congested large cities. But less so between them unless already on railway routes that can be upgraded. On your parking point - step away and think of these cars parked away at sites and called in to smaller sites near the predicted/requested place that they are required. A car may start in Kent but end up outside Birmingham depending on how it was used and the forecast level of demand for the following 4 hours. Now to do some work...
Josias - yes there will be a role for public transport particularly within congested large cities. But less so between them unless already on railway routes that can be upgraded. On your parking point - step away and think of these cars parked away at sites and called in to smaller sites near the predicted/requested place that they are required. A car may start in Kent but end up outside Birmingham depending on how it was used and the forecast level of demand for the following 4 hours. Now to do some work...
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
Their tax allowance has grown by £2,495 EACH since 2012/13
The referendum became Conservative policy because it was the right thing to do - and was a huge dividing line between the Tories , who trusted the voters with a say, and Labour and the LibDems who did not.
had UKIP not appeared to be an existential threat to the Conservatives in 2011-12, I doubt we'd be talking about a referendum at all.
That may be so, but the fact still remains that once the referendum became Conservative policy, the Kippers (a) tried to argue that Cameron couldn't be trusted on it, and (b) spent the next two years trying to sabotage the Conservative majority needed to deliver it. If they were serious about wanting a referendum and an eventual exit, they would have advised people to vote Conservative and spent the time preparing the Brexit case. Their actions and strategy demonstrate that they didn't want the referendum to happen.
Garbage. Cameron never wanted a referendum and still doesn't. he knows that no matter how much he tries to fix it so that In wins he is still subject to external events beyond his control. The only people who pretend that he is in anyway neutral or would ever consider recommending Leave are those who - like him - want us to stay in no matter what. Cameron was forced into the referendum decision and still doesn't trust the voters to deliver the 'right' result.
I think Cameron might consider recommending leave and I'm on the fence.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
Your pompous, high and mighty tone doesn't detract from the fact that you are wrong
There were plenty of plausible outcomes that would have suited me, and as it happens this one has turned out ok thanks to the migrant crisis.
Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling, back when Labour had some basic grounding in economics:
FN: So, tax credits designed to promote equality of outcome ended up promoting inequality of wages?
AD: I just think that whenever you introduce any policy on tax, on spend, on benefits, you need to look all the time as to what it’s actually doing – and what are the unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences is that we are now subsidising lower wages in a way that was never intended.
Yes, as we've remarked on here before, housing benefit subsidises landlords (and helps support the house price bubble) and tax credits subsidise bad employers. So, tying this in with non-partisan cross-party policy transfer, a Conservative case for raising the minimum wage will include eliminating these market-distorting subsidies.
Except that the raised minimum wage will be dwarfed by cuts in tax credits for many
Tax credit cuts is the poll tax in a brown envelope. I predict it will come back to seriously haunt the Tories.
The one and only toxic welfare change presented since the last election is Corbyn's commitment to limitless benefits.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
Their tax allowance has grown by £2,495 EACH since 2012/13
That's a £1,000 a year tax cut.
Absolutely - the line has to be something like:
This is one of the basket of changes that will bring an end to the concept of 'the working poor'. A low taxes, low welfare, higher wage economy.
Arguably the most influential Sci-Fi writer on today's culture is Timothy Zahn.
Jeff vandermeer, Ernest Cline, john scalzi, Emily St. John Mandel, Liu Cixin, Ann Leckie, and Brandon Sanderson seem to be the big names these days. So it's postmodernism, gaming and retro-gaming, China, gender identity, and ripoffs of Harry Potter. Welcome to the 2010s...:-(
Brandon Sanderson is one of the most successful writers today of straightforward good vs evil fantasy. But the genre as a whole has moved in the direction of moral ambiguity. Main characters are anti heroes, or villain protagonists. They do morally dubious things and good and evil are confused.
The problem is lesser authors try for that new trend too hard, to the point there is nothing interesting about them, no ups and downs, no peaks at all, just one note in a different way in the name of presenting as more complex and deep, without any actual meaning or depth, just grim, pretentious dribble.
Some of them need to remember that to have real tragedy we also need to see some happiness or levity, or some idea it is possible, so the darkness and moral ambiguity hits harder. If the reaction to everything is the same, and everyone has no positive qualities, how can I care when things happen to Them?
I'm not a fan, clearly. Why done right, it's great. When done poorly, it's terrible.
I think that relentless misery, or utterly unlikeable characters, make a novel very hard to read, however well-written it is.
Grimdark fiction is far better if it contains elements of humour, romance, and at least some characters that one can empathise with.
I couldn't get into The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, after the protagonist brutally rapes a young woman who comes to his aid. I didn't enjoy Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, when, right at the start of the novel, the protagonist recalls raping a farmer's daughter, then locking her in a barn with her family, which he then set fire to. The protagonist of KJ Parker's The Hammer is a sociopath, who I'd happily have seen chucked off a cliff. But, all three novels are very well-written, and have received a good deal of critical acclaim.
By way of comparison, I think Patricia Highsmith was an outstandingly competent writer, but I can't stand her Ripley novels, because Tom Ripley is such an obnoxious character.
Writers like George Martin and Joe Abercrombie get the balance just about right, IMHO.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
The thing is, do you see them in places like downtown San Francisco? That is the kind of challenge which looks to me impossible, but I may be wrong.
Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling, back when Labour had some basic grounding in economics:
FN: So, tax credits designed to promote equality of outcome ended up promoting inequality of wages?
AD: I just think that whenever you introduce any policy on tax, on spend, on benefits, you need to look all the time as to what it’s actually doing – and what are the unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences is that we are now subsidising lower wages in a way that was never intended.
Yes, as we've remarked on here before, housing benefit subsidises landlords (and helps support the house price bubble) and tax credits subsidise bad employers. So, tying this in with non-partisan cross-party policy transfer, a Conservative case for raising the minimum wage will include eliminating these market-distorting subsidies.
Except that the raised minimum wage will be dwarfed by cuts in tax credits for many
Tax credit cuts is the poll tax in a brown envelope. I predict it will come back to seriously haunt the Tories.
The one and only toxic welfare change presented since the last election is Corbyn's commitment to limitless benefits.
His Mick Philpott pledge.
Yessir, nothing nasty about the Tories, at all. All the nasty people are the 20-year olds with eggs, nobody here on PB thinking people on welfare are murderous Untermenschen.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
That's what I thought - makes me wonder what @JosiasJessop is getting at up-thread with the complete AI thing. Is there some part of the problem that they aren't able to cope with that's fundamentally different to the parts they seem to be handling OK?
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
No one said the Kippers had to have thought out their position ex-ante.
Stopped clocks, etc.
I have no doubt that the constant Kipper pressure resulted in the referendum pledge. I think UKIP is very far from a political party but as a pressure group (with an attached repository for discontented/like-minded votes) they did extremely well in forcing Cam to offer a referendum.
Don't forget this was before GO's superman-ness and was in the era of Cam's more flip-flops than a beach in Ibiza.
Cameron's speech in 2013 was pretty cogent on why we need a renegotiation and referendum. Mass migration has come since which makes it more important that we stay out of Schengen. But the Eurozone and its inevitable ever closer union make our situation now quite different. The point is that leaving the EU and joining the EEA for instance would make no significant difference to our lives and our relationship with the EU. The EU in its ever closer format would still exist and we would still have to live with it. The problem with leaving the EU is we leave behind all our opt outs and our opt out of Schengen. In any future negotiation with the EU who is to say that some future labour govt (liblab?) Govt would not conceded Schengen citing economic necessity?
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Hmmm. I think I would trust a driverless car that uses radar in fog rather more than I would trust a human driver using the MkI eyeball and native idiocy. I am sure that most on here have seen the bloody fools who refuse to adjust their driving habits and speeds to match the conditions and every winter we have big pile-ups and fatal accidents on our motorways as a result of people driving faster than they can see to be clear.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
Their tax allowance has grown by £2,495 EACH since 2012/13
That's a £1,000 a year tax cut.
Absolutely - the line has to be something like:
This is one of the basket of changes that will bring an end to the concept of 'the working poor'. A low taxes, low welfare, higher wage economy.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
Their tax allowance has grown by £2,495 EACH since 2012/13
That's a £1,000 a year tax cut.
Only if they are earning enough to make full use of that allowance. The problem is not going to be "hard working families" in full time employment, the problem is going to be the part time working families whose income is currently made up to full time wages by the other taxpayers.
And you know what? Ultimately the objective is to change their behaviour and, brutal though it might seem, that is what is required.
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
Driverless cars depend on part on signals based in the road .. And of course of lots of other technology both within and outwith the car -eg GPS to establish a position.
It therefore follows - based on a simple risk assessment - that ALL systems used to drive the car are fault tolerant as the consequences will be horrendous
In a country which needs to build additional power stations - and has really delayed doing anything whilst the supply position has worsened, any reliance on the National Grid to provide seamless power to road based signals is likely to be a major risk in future. Until power station capacity is increased in the late 2020s at the earliest.. (due to lead times/politics).
Either that or install extra generating capacity for road based signals at vast extra cost.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Cities are also a massive problem for them, because of the increased interactions with human beings: on foot or bike, animals, and other vehicles, such as parked or manoeuvring.
One of my complaints about Google's publicity about their scheme is that they're concentrating on the massive number of miles done, and not on the types of roads. They're being slightly disingenuous.
And yes, weather such as rain and snow is also kyboshing their systems at the moment. There are some funny videos about of driverless cars failing in even mildly wet conditions.
In engineering, 90% of the work often takes 10% of the effort. The remaining ten percent - getting it to work in all situations - can be the other 90%.
Mr. JEO, others have said that, but I'd be astounded if Cameron recommended we leave.
People were astounded when Cameron won a majority. These things happen.
I think Cameron is above all a pragmatist. Imagine he gets back from his renegotiation and all he has is a few non-treaty changes to benefits, a handful of business regulations, and some symbolic wording.
He wouldn't be able to claim he had limited free movement, or the new refugees. He wouldn't be able to claim he'd opened us up to non-EU trade. He wouldn't be able to claim he'd protected us from the Eurozone bloc vote. And it would be obvious to everyone that despite our best efforts, the UK will never be taken seriously by our EU partners while we remain inside. The difference between that and how the UK government responded to the threat of Scottish independence, with a raft of new autonomy, would be very clear.
He would be facing a raft of cabinet resignations and would be heading into a referendum where he would probably lose. At that point he can choose to be remembered as the Tory leader who failed to keep us in Europe, or he can go down as the bold Tory leader that led the UK out.
There were plenty of plausible outcomes that would have suited me, and as it happens this one has turned out ok thanks to the migrant crisis.
It has turned out OK because UKIP failed in its attempt to wreck the Conservative Party's chances of getting a majority.
UKIP's strategy was to maximise its vote. A third of the voters went for options either than Conservative or Labour. Voting for one of those options didn't imply that you favoured Ed Milliband as Prime Minister. One might just as well argue that anyone who voted Green, or SNP favoured David Cameron as Prime Minister
However, two cabinet ministers told The Times that the government was likely to offer more help to the working poor so long as it was not presented as a U-turn or watering down of the plan.
Referring to the autumn statement and the budget, one said: “There are two fiscal events before April. Let’s see where we are, and how tax receipts, particularly corporate tax receipts, are doing ...
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
That's what I thought - makes me wonder what @JosiasJessop is getting at up-thread with the complete AI thing. Is there some part of the problem that they aren't able to cope with that's fundamentally different to the parts they seem to be handling OK?
I have read they can't deal with multistory car parks.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
The thing is, do you see them in places like downtown San Francisco? That is the kind of challenge which looks to me impossible, but I may be wrong.
They have been tested in downtown San Francisco too. They seem to be pretty effective in built up areas where the traffic is stop start and never moves that fast, as long as the weather conditions are OK. It may not rain in San Francisco anymore, but it does still get foggy. And in other parts of the US ice, snow etc are going to be major issues. The other issue, of course, is how they deal with the irrational behaviour of others.
Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling, back when Labour had some basic grounding in economics:
FN: So, tax credits designed to promote equality of outcome ended up promoting inequality of wages?
AD: I just think that whenever you introduce any policy on tax, on spend, on benefits, you need to look all the time as to what it’s actually doing – and what are the unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences is that we are now subsidising lower wages in a way that was never intended.
Yes, as we've remarked on here before, housing benefit subsidises landlords (and helps support the house price bubble) and tax credits subsidise bad employers. So, tying this in with non-partisan cross-party policy transfer, a Conservative case for raising the minimum wage will include eliminating these market-distorting subsidies.
Except that the raised minimum wage will be dwarfed by cuts in tax credits for many
Tax credit cuts is the poll tax in a brown envelope. I predict it will come back to seriously haunt the Tories.
The one and only toxic welfare change presented since the last election is Corbyn's commitment to limitless benefits.
His Mick Philpott pledge.
Yessir, nothing nasty about the Tories, at all. All the nasty people are the 20-year olds with eggs, nobody here on PB thinking people on welfare are murderous Untermenschen.
Drifting into German, eh? Neo-this and Neo-that, next?
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Hmmm. I think I would trust a driverless car that uses radar in fog rather more than I would trust a human driver using the MkI eyeball and native idiocy. I am sure that most on here have seen the bloody fools who refuse to adjust their driving habits and speeds to match the conditions and every winter we have big pile-ups and fatal accidents on our motorways as a result of people driving faster than they can see to be clear.
How do driverless cars work in the not unusual environment of the modest town or village with cars parked on either side of road and cars coming out of side roads with post vans stopped and delivery vans stopped and starting and turning and the need to observe take choices of when to give way and !ove in and out and the need to allow for the cars behind you and for the mix of driven and driverless cars? And pedestrians. Driverless cars? Brave New World? Utter garbage!
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
Driverless cars depend on part on signals based in the road .. And of course of lots of other technology both within and outwith the car -eg GPS to establish a position.
It therefore follows - based on a simple risk assessment - that ALL systems used to drive the car are fault tolerant as the consequences will be horrendous
In a country which needs to build additional power stations - and has really delayed doing anything whilst the supply position has worsened, any reliance on the National Grid to provide seamless power to road based signals is likely to be a major risk in future. Until power station capacity is increased in the late 2020s at the earliest.. (due to lead times/politics).
Either that or install extra generating capacity for road based signals at vast extra cost.
Without meaning to turn this thread into a driverless cars symposium, it's interesting to see the various techs being developed for this and the way they can fail, whether they are visible-light detection systems, lidar or others.
Google have spent a great deal of time and effort mapping the roads their cars travel down in massive detail. Something as simple as temporary traffic works might be a potentially massive problem. Beacons might be one way ("There's some traffic lights hereabouts at TL54612 76854"), but they're potentially flawed and only one of many problems.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Cities are also a massive problem for them, because of the increased interactions with human beings: on foot or bike, animals, and other vehicles, such as parked or manoeuvring.
One of my complaints about Google's publicity about their scheme is that they're concentrating on the massive number of miles done, and not on the types of roads. They're being slightly disingenuous.
And yes, weather such as rain and snow is also kyboshing their systems at the moment. There are some funny videos about of driverless cars failing in even mildly wet conditions.
In engineering, 90% of the work often takes 10% of the effort. The remaining ten percent - getting it to work in all situations - can be the other 90%.
iIdon't think there's any doubt that they will get there though. Driverless cars will, much like the internet fundamentally change our world, interesting times.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
Their tax allowance has grown by £2,495 EACH since 2012/13
That's a £1,000 a year tax cut.
Only if they are earning enough to make full use of that allowance. The problem is not going to be "hard working families" in full time employment, the problem is going to be the part time working families whose income is currently made up to full time wages by the other taxpayers.
And you know what? Ultimately the objective is to change their behaviour and, brutal though it might seem, that is what is required.
That's true.
A related point is that many people's income varies year-to-year anyway. Those who see their household income rise because of a new job will feel the effect of the changes far less. Similarly, those who see their income fall will also not notice the change as much, partly because they weren't experiencing the tax credit income before anyway, and partly because they were already anticipating a fall in income. That it's more severe than it would have been doesn't really change their experience.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
That's what I thought - makes me wonder what @JosiasJessop is getting at up-thread with the complete AI thing. Is there some part of the problem that they aren't able to cope with that's fundamentally different to the parts they seem to be handling OK?
I have read they can't deal with multistory car parks.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
That's what I thought - makes me wonder what @JosiasJessop is getting at up-thread with the complete AI thing. Is there some part of the problem that they aren't able to cope with that's fundamentally different to the parts they seem to be handling OK?
I have read they can't deal with multistory car parks.
Why would a driverless car need to deal with multi-storey car parks? Surely the idea is not to have them sitting around waiting but rather being used to move people and things for as much time as possible.
Ads and when they get driverless cars working the whole notion of car ownership will change.
As of 1.10.15 the NMW was raised by 20p per hour from £6.50 to £6.70 per hour, an increase of 3%. A person working 35 hours a week on that rate will therefore earn £234.50 a week or £12,194 a year. They will pay tax on £1594 of that, paying £318.80 in tax.
From now they will earn £7 a week more, equivalent to £30.10 a month. They will pay £120 less tax on their earnings than last year, equivalent to £10.00 a month.
If a couple are both working full time they are therefore £80.20 a month better off from Government policy. If their WTC is reduced by £100 they are clearly worse off but not by much.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Cities are also a massive problem for them, because of the increased interactions with human beings: on foot or bike, animals, and other vehicles, such as parked or manoeuvring.
One of my complaints about Google's publicity about their scheme is that they're concentrating on the massive number of miles done, and not on the types of roads. They're being slightly disingenuous.
And yes, weather such as rain and snow is also kyboshing their systems at the moment. There are some funny videos about of driverless cars failing in even mildly wet conditions.
In engineering, 90% of the work often takes 10% of the effort. The remaining ten percent - getting it to work in all situations - can be the other 90%.
iIdon't think there's any doubt that they will get there though. Driverless cars will, much like the internet fundamentally change our world, interesting times.
I have big doubts, which is why I think we're more likely to get a slow change for most driving situations. Things like active city braking and lane control being slowly extended over time in most cars we buy, with some fully autonomous cars used in some limited circumstances.
I hope I'm wrong, but the problems they face are massive. The effort will be in getting the tricky use cases such as cities or rural roads out of the way.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Hmmm. I think I would trust a driverless car that uses radar in fog rather more than I would trust a human driver using the MkI eyeball and native idiocy. I am sure that most on here have seen the bloody fools who refuse to adjust their driving habits and speeds to match the conditions and every winter we have big pile-ups and fatal accidents on our motorways as a result of people driving faster than they can see to be clear.
How do driverless cars work in the not unusual environment of the modest town or village with cars parked on either side of road and cars coming out of side roads with post vans stopped and delivery vans stopped and starting and turning and the need to observe take choices of when to give way and !ove in and out and the need to allow for the cars behind you and for the mix of driven and driverless cars? And pedestrians. Driverless cars? Brave New World? Utter garbage!
Radar in car to map extra street furniture onto existing map of road. Measure widths left to travel, radar sees in cars coming.. works out when to move.
Cars in sideroads detected again by radar, moving ones identified as a hazard..
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
That's what I thought - makes me wonder what @JosiasJessop is getting at up-thread with the complete AI thing. Is there some part of the problem that they aren't able to cope with that's fundamentally different to the parts they seem to be handling OK?
I have read they can't deal with multistory car parks.
I suggest people reread Jurassic Park and take in what that book was really about. Machine 'intelligence'? Infallible science (and scientists?)? Give me a break.
Can I just say that I enjoy driving. I don't particularly enjoy being driven (the result of an accident in Kenya many many years ago). But driving in a good comfortable car with my favourite music or audio book on is a real pleasure.
Driverless cars - whatever their other advantages may be - seem a bit meh on that front.
I have emailed the conservative party re tax credits. My son and daughter-in-law are already down over £100 per month. Both work full-time and have not had a pay rise. They really need to take the criticisms seriously because this will grow and grow. The media are already stirring the pot, particularly the BBC. Our TV screens and radio programmes will be an endless stream of "families" affected by this.
Their tax allowance has grown by £2,495 EACH since 2012/13
That's a £1,000 a year tax cut.
Only if they are earning enough to make full use of that allowance. The problem is not going to be "hard working families" in full time employment, the problem is going to be the part time working families whose income is currently made up to full time wages by the other taxpayers.
And you know what? Ultimately the objective is to change their behaviour and, brutal though it might seem, that is what is required.
True - every single "case" rolled out for gloom regarding tax credits involves part time workers - without exception.
The other nudge this policy gives is to employers to raise wages - seems to be working too.
Arguably the most influential Sci-Fi writer on today's culture is Timothy Zahn.
Jeff vandermeer, Ernest Cline, john scalzi, Emily St. John Mandel, Liu Cixin, Ann Leckie, and Brandon Sanderson seem to be the big names these days. So it's postmodernism, gaming and retro-gaming, China, gender identity, and ripoffs of Harry Potter. Welcome to the 2010s...:-(
Brandheroes, or villain protagonists. They do morally dubious things and good and evil are confused.
The problem is lesser auth
I'm not a fan, clearly. Why done right, it's great. When done poorly, it's terrible.
I think that relentless misery, or utterly unlikeable characters, make a novel very hard to read, however well-written it is.
Grimdark fiction is far better if it contains elements of humour, romance, and at least some characters that one can empathise with.
I couldn't get into The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, after the protagonist brutally rapes a young woman who comes to his aid. I didn't enjoy Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, when, right at the start of the novel, the protagonist recalls raping a farmer's daughter, then locking her in a barn with her family, which he then set fire to. The protagonist of KJ Parker's The Hammer is a sociopath, who I'd happily have seen chucked off a cliff. But, all three novels are very well-written, and have received a good deal of critical acclaim.
By way of comparison, I think Patricia Highsmith was an outstandingly competent writer, but I can't stand her Ripley novels, because Tom Ripley is such an obnoxious character.
Writers like George Martin and Joe Abercrombie get the balance just about right, IMHO.
Agreed on Martin, and I'll have to give Abercrombie another go - I thought he got the balance between 'awful people awful world but still interesting' wrong when I read his first book, but many people tell me he's got it just right.
As you say, you need other elements besides just oppressive awfulness - I think people confuse that just because a very unlikable character can be interesting, does not mean that everyone being unlikable means the story is super interesting. The contrast is often what makes someone interesting despite being awful, but even if you don't have that, I can hate the character if you want, but I do need to want to see what happens to them, to the world, even if it is to see them get comeuppance, or succeed.
I don't think I could reread Thomas Covenant again, despite having done so many times in my adolesence. He's such a miserable, repetitively depressing git on top of everything else that I feel like I shouldn't waste time caring.
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM
You make my point exactly. If you didn't want Cameron to be PM, then it follows as night follows day you wanted Ed Miliband to be PM, and therefore didn't want a referendum.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
No one said the Kippers had to have thought out their position ex-ante.
Stopped clocks, etc.
I have no doubt that the constant Kipper pressure resulted in the referendum pledge. I think UKIP is very far from a political party but as a pressure group (with an attached repository for discontented/like-minded votes) they did extremely well in forcing Cam to offer a referendum.
Don't forget this was before GO's superman-ness and was in the era of Cam's more flip-flops than a beach in Ibiza.
Cameron's speech in 2013 was pretty cogent on why we need a renegotiation and referendum. Mass migration has come since which makes it more important that we stay out of Schengen. But the Eurozone and its inevitable ever closer union make our situation now quite different. The point is that leaving the EU and joining the EEA for instance would make no significant difference to our lives and our relationship with the EU. The EU in its ever closer format would still exist and we would still have to live with it. The problem with leaving the EU is we leave behind all our opt outs and our opt out of Schengen. In any future negotiation with the EU who is to say that some future labour govt (liblab?) Govt would not conceded Schengen citing economic necessity?
Indeed, indeed and indeed.
However, I don't think he would have made that speech in 2013 without the Kippers at his back forcing him to make it. Dear god he had enough on his plate without effing Europe. All the wheres, whys and hows in terms of benefits or otherwise are as maybe. Plus I was happy to see that he was structured in his giving in.
But giving in it was.
On tax credits, as commentators have pointed out, this is not a poll tax moment as the basic premise of simplifying the tax system, cutting the welfare bill, and halting subsidies to supermarkets, is a good one.
GO has to address this head on. It is early in the administration and some kind of measure which would mitigate the biggest losers can be introduced. Tapering someone suggested. Remember the fuss about and then the solution/modification to the child benefit cliff-edge? No? Exactly.
There were plenty of plausible outcomes that would have suited me, and as it happens this one has turned out ok thanks to the migrant crisis.
It has turned out OK because UKIP failed in its attempt to wreck the Conservative Party's chances of getting a majority.
UKIP's strategy was to maximise its vote. A third of the voters went for options either than Conservative or Labour. Voting for one of those options didn't imply that you favoured Ed Milliband as Prime Minister. One might just as well argue that anyone who voted Green, or SNP favoured David Cameron as Prime Minister
There was me thinking that UKIP's strategy was a referendum on the EU.
Can I just say that I enjoy driving. I don't particularly enjoy being driven (the result of an accident in Kenya many many years ago). But driving in a good comfortable car with my favourite music or audio book on is a real pleasure.
Driverless cars - whatever their other advantages may be - seem a bit meh on that front.
I hate driving in built up areas where the traffic moves at a snail's pace. Not having to worry about anything in situations like that would be great. Should they happen, I suspect they'll be most successful if they work on some kind of hybrid basis.
Driverless cars are a pretty common sight driving up and down the highways in Silicon Valley. They move relatively slowly and are clearly marked, so everyone gives them a wide berth. Talking to people there, the major problem currently seems to be working out how they will behave in adverse weather conditions - especially fog, which is not unknown in that part of California.
Cities are also a massive problem for them, because of the increased interactions with human beings: on foot or bike, animals, and other vehicles, such as parked or manoeuvring.
One of my complaints about Google's publicity about their scheme is that they're concentrating on the massive number of miles done, and not on the types of roads. They're being slightly disingenuous.
And yes, weather such as rain and snow is also kyboshing their systems at the moment. There are some funny videos about of driverless cars failing in even mildly wet conditions.
In engineering, 90% of the work often takes 10% of the effort. The remaining ten percent - getting it to work in all situations - can be the other 90%.
iIdon't think there's any doubt that they will get there though. Driverless cars will, much like the internet fundamentally change our world, interesting times.
I have big doubts, which is why I think we're more likely to get a slow change for most driving situations. Things like active city braking and lane control being slowly extended over time in most cars we buy, with some fully autonomous cars used in some limited circumstances.
I hope I'm wrong, but the problems they face are massive. The effort will be in getting the tricky use cases such as cities or rural roads out of the way.
I just want the ability to get home from the pub in my driverless car. That will be the litmus test if they actually do what they promise.
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
Reminds me of a purported michael Schumacher quote, when someone suggested the cars were getting so simple to drive that even a monkey could do it. His supposed response? Yes, but not as fast.
As of 1.10.15 the NMW was raised by 20p per hour from £6.50 to £6.70 per hour, an increase of 3%. A person working 35 hours a week on that rate will therefore earn £234.50 a week or £12,194 a year. They will pay tax on £1594 of that, paying £318.80 in tax.
From now they will earn £7 a week more, equivalent to £30.10 a month. They will pay £120 less tax on their earnings than last year, equivalent to £10.00 a month.
If a couple are both working full time they are therefore £80.20 a month better off from Government policy. If their WTC is reduced by £100 they are clearly worse off but not by much.
Give a man £1000 and he won't mention anything. Take £50 away and he'll run kicking and screaming !
I'm sceptical about driverless cars not because of railways, but because I have a (perhaps dangerously) little knowledge of where the tech is at the moment, and where it needs to get. And there is a yawning gulf between the two. In fact, some say that just the necessary vision systems are an AI-complete problem to solve.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
Bear in mind that the machines don't actually have to be good at driving, they just have to be better than us monkeys.
Driverless cars depend on part on signals based in the road .. And of course of lots of other technology both within and outwith the car -eg GPS to establish a position.
It therefore follows - based on a simple risk assessment - that ALL systems used to drive the car are fault tolerant as the consequences will be horrendous
In a country which needs to build additional power stations - and has really delayed doing anything whilst the supply position has worsened, any reliance on the National Grid to provide seamless power to road based signals is likely to be a major risk in future. Until power station capacity is increased in the late 2020s at the earliest.. (due to lead times/politics).
Either that or install extra generating capacity for road based signals at vast extra cost.
Without meaning to turn this thread into a driverless cars symposium.
Rather a thousand posts on driverless cars than one more on Michelle effing Thomson.
Comments
Over that timescale (or way back to 1973, if you prefer) the Tory party has moved from being the most pro-EEC party, to pro-single market, to pro-ERM, to wait-and-see on the euro, to no euro for next parliament, to never the euro, to not let matters rest here, to renegotiate and now to half the party wanting to quit the EU outright.
The direction of travel is pretty clear to me, and I don't think the eurosceptic journey is yet complete.
But on your points about driverless cars yes we do not know all the answers but the implications are far reaching. Here are a few guesses FWIW:-
1. We will see most rented as taxis. Why own two boxes on your drive when you can rent for no capex commitment and drink whatever you want.
2. The car industry may find it reduces them to producing a few bland range of cars. Maybe only 3-5 global producers.
3. Motorways will turn into long convoys of cars travelling at higher average speeds.
I don't think UKIP were being duplicitous. I think they genuinely believed UKIP doing better was the best way to get a winnable referendum. They were just wrong, and failed to account for how much the party can hold Cameron to account.
So it’s a coup for Osborne – but a big victory for Corbyn.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2015/10/recruiting-andrew-adonis-coup-george-osborne-and-victory-jeremy-corbyn
You can LOL all you like, but your just making my point for me about partisan point scoring
In the real world which Corbyn refuses to join the deficit is pretty much everything. We are missing an opportunity but we really missed it in the period 2002-2008.
"His temporary exit from Labour politics will only confirm the suspicion in parts of the Labour party that the party’s moderates are Conservative sleeper agents, making it much harder for anyone to displace or dissent from the Corbyn line. "
I am a kipper, I wanted a referendum and still do. I didn't want Cameron to be PM because I thought, and his actions on purdah, the wording and ministerial behaviour seem to back me up, that he would use the levers of power that come with being PM to influence the result in an underhand way.
Luckily enough for BOOers, events since May have made it almost impossible for someone pretending to be open minded about it to recommend 'Remain'... Swings and roundabouts
Nobody's interested in policies that sound bad and work badly, so what's left is the government trying to implement things that sound bad and work well without anybody noticing them doing it, while the opposition argues for things that sound good and work badly.
I can't help you resolve this logical conundrum because there is no solution to it.
Fortunately the voters had more sense, and we do have Cameron as PM in a majority Conservative government, and therefore we will get the referendum you claim to want, despite the efforts of UKIP to sabotage it.
And not a single AI-complete problem has ever been solved.
But if it can be done:
1) I think you're correct. But for most people cars are a convenience item: I choose to go to the supermarket with a few minutes notice. There'll also be a problem with the rented model with demand at various times of the day.
2) The key to driverless cars and the business model may not actually be the driverless car tech, but the data that will come with it. The world's biggest driverless car company might not actually make cars, but deal with the big data that comes out of it.
3) Agree, but what happens when they get off the motorway? The point-to-point model breaks down when one of those points is under massive demand, for instance a city centre at rush hour. Where are the driverless cars parked?
As I've mentioned before, it's much more likely that you will enter a journey you require: say from here outside Cambridge to Wimbledon. The online booking system will then take my requirements (e.g. number of changes I'm willing to tolerate, price, ETA etc) and come up with the best route.
For instance a driverless car might pick me up and drive me to Waterbeach (because Cambridge's traffic is busy at the relevant time), where I get on a train to London. At Kings Cross an automated taxi might take me to my destination, or it might advise me to take the tube, where a driverless car will be awaiting my arrival.
None of the problems are insurmountable, but they will all change the way we interact with transport. Perversely, it might increase the need for public transport ...
Some of them need to remember that to have real tragedy we also need to see some happiness or levity, or some idea it is possible, so the darkness and moral ambiguity hits harder. If the reaction to everything is the same, and everyone has no positive qualities, how can I care when things happen to Them?
I'm not a fan, clearly. Why done right, it's great. When done poorly, it's terrible.
http://news.yahoo.com/german-authorities-now-expect-1-5-million-migrants-203114800--business.html
Perhaps he thought a weak Miliband government might collapse in a few months and a more eurosceptic Conservative leader could arise.
Perhaps is just wrong, rather than trying to sabotage things.
It is the oddity of the Corbyn aim here which is confusing things.
He has nailed his colours to a rotten mast.
Stopped clocks, etc.
I have no doubt that the constant Kipper pressure resulted in the referendum pledge. I think UKIP is very far from a political party but as a pressure group (with an attached repository for discontented/like-minded votes) they did extremely well in forcing Cam to offer a referendum.
Don't forget this was before GO's superman-ness and was in the era of Cam's more flip-flops than a beach in Ibiza.
Simples.
On your parking point - step away and think of these cars parked away at sites and called in to smaller sites near the predicted/requested place that they are required. A car may start in Kent but end up outside Birmingham depending on how it was used and the forecast level of demand for the following 4 hours. Now to do some work...
We are not monkeys.
That's a £1,000 a year tax cut.
http://labourlist.org/2015/10/10-of-the-best-denis-healey-quotes/
There were plenty of plausible outcomes that would have suited me, and as it happens this one has turned out ok thanks to the migrant crisis.
His Mick Philpott pledge.
This is one of the basket of changes that will bring an end to the concept of 'the working poor'. A low taxes, low welfare, higher wage economy.
Grimdark fiction is far better if it contains elements of humour, romance, and at least some characters that one can empathise with.
I couldn't get into The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, after the protagonist brutally rapes a young woman who comes to his aid. I didn't enjoy Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, when, right at the start of the novel, the protagonist recalls raping a farmer's daughter, then locking her in a barn with her family, which he then set fire to. The protagonist of KJ Parker's The Hammer is a sociopath, who I'd happily have seen chucked off a cliff. But, all three novels are very well-written, and have received a good deal of critical acclaim.
By way of comparison, I think Patricia Highsmith was an outstandingly competent writer, but I can't stand her Ripley novels, because Tom Ripley is such an obnoxious character.
Writers like George Martin and Joe Abercrombie get the balance just about right, IMHO.
The point is that leaving the EU and joining the EEA for instance would make no significant difference to our lives and our relationship with the EU. The EU in its ever closer format would still exist and we would still have to live with it. The problem with leaving the EU is we leave behind all our opt outs and our opt out of Schengen. In any future negotiation with the EU who is to say that some future labour govt (liblab?) Govt would not conceded Schengen citing economic necessity?
And you know what? Ultimately the objective is to change their behaviour and, brutal though it might seem, that is what is required.
It therefore follows - based on a simple risk assessment - that ALL systems used to drive the car are fault tolerant as the consequences will be horrendous
In a country which needs to build additional power stations - and has really delayed doing anything whilst the supply position has worsened, any reliance on the National Grid to provide seamless power to road based signals is likely to be a major risk in future. Until power station capacity is increased in the late 2020s at the earliest.. (due to lead times/politics).
Either that or install extra generating capacity for road based signals at vast extra cost.
One of my complaints about Google's publicity about their scheme is that they're concentrating on the massive number of miles done, and not on the types of roads. They're being slightly disingenuous.
And yes, weather such as rain and snow is also kyboshing their systems at the moment. There are some funny videos about of driverless cars failing in even mildly wet conditions.
In engineering, 90% of the work often takes 10% of the effort. The remaining ten percent - getting it to work in all situations - can be the other 90%.
I think Cameron is above all a pragmatist. Imagine he gets back from his renegotiation and all he has is a few non-treaty changes to benefits, a handful of business regulations, and some symbolic wording.
He wouldn't be able to claim he had limited free movement, or the new refugees. He wouldn't be able to claim he'd opened us up to non-EU trade. He wouldn't be able to claim he'd protected us from the Eurozone bloc vote. And it would be obvious to everyone that despite our best efforts, the UK will never be taken seriously by our EU partners while we remain inside. The difference between that and how the UK government responded to the threat of Scottish independence, with a raft of new autonomy, would be very clear.
He would be facing a raft of cabinet resignations and would be heading into a referendum where he would probably lose. At that point he can choose to be remembered as the Tory leader who failed to keep us in Europe, or he can go down as the bold Tory leader that led the UK out.
Don't worry Ricky you've got you man in situ, & i have got my referendum!
Driverless cars? Brave New World? Utter garbage!
Google have spent a great deal of time and effort mapping the roads their cars travel down in massive detail. Something as simple as temporary traffic works might be a potentially massive problem. Beacons might be one way ("There's some traffic lights hereabouts at TL54612 76854"), but they're potentially flawed and only one of many problems.
A related point is that many people's income varies year-to-year anyway. Those who see their household income rise because of a new job will feel the effect of the changes far less. Similarly, those who see their income fall will also not notice the change as much, partly because they weren't experiencing the tax credit income before anyway, and partly because they were already anticipating a fall in income. That it's more severe than it would have been doesn't really change their experience.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.html
Ads and when they get driverless cars working the whole notion of car ownership will change.
From now they will earn £7 a week more, equivalent to £30.10 a month. They will pay £120 less tax on their earnings than last year, equivalent to £10.00 a month.
If a couple are both working full time they are therefore £80.20 a month better off from Government policy. If their WTC is reduced by £100 they are clearly worse off but not by much.
I hope I'm wrong, but the problems they face are massive. The effort will be in getting the tricky use cases such as cities or rural roads out of the way.
Measure widths left to travel, radar sees in cars coming.. works out when to move.
Cars in sideroads detected again by radar, moving ones identified as a hazard..
Cars behind can take care of themselves.. :-)
Driverless cars - whatever their other advantages may be - seem a bit meh on that front.
The other nudge this policy gives is to employers to raise wages - seems to be working too.
Let us not forget, it took decades for the daleks to defeat stairs.
As you say, you need other elements besides just oppressive awfulness - I think people confuse that just because a very unlikable character can be interesting, does not mean that everyone being unlikable means the story is super interesting. The contrast is often what makes someone interesting despite being awful, but even if you don't have that, I can hate the character if you want, but I do need to want to see what happens to them, to the world, even if it is to see them get comeuppance, or succeed.
I don't think I could reread Thomas Covenant again, despite having done so many times in my adolesence. He's such a miserable, repetitively depressing git on top of everything else that I feel like I shouldn't waste time caring.
However, I don't think he would have made that speech in 2013 without the Kippers at his back forcing him to make it. Dear god he had enough on his plate without effing Europe. All the wheres, whys and hows in terms of benefits or otherwise are as maybe. Plus I was happy to see that he was structured in his giving in.
But giving in it was.
On tax credits, as commentators have pointed out, this is not a poll tax moment as the basic premise of simplifying the tax system, cutting the welfare bill, and halting subsidies to supermarkets, is a good one.
GO has to address this head on. It is early in the administration and some kind of measure which would mitigate the biggest losers can be introduced. Tapering someone suggested. Remember the fuss about and then the solution/modification to the child benefit cliff-edge? No? Exactly.