Complacency has been the bane of the established political class across the Western world these last few years; a bad habit it doesn’t seem capable of kicking. Time and again, outsiders have shaken up the order, from Tsipras in Greece to Labour electing Corbyn to Trump taking the Republican nomination to Bernie Sanders running Hillary close to the UK voting for Brexit.
Comments
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36822272
Genuinely surprised by this.
It's incredible to think that Warren East, its driving force for many years in creating such enormous wealth, was awarded a CBE when so many two bit popstars/ actors/ other celebs receive their gongs for achieving next to nothing. It makes a complete mockery of the entire honours system.
The Front National just has too much baggage (at the moment) to win 50%+1 in the second round of a presidential election, and Le Pen lacks something that candidates like Hofer seem to have in Austria.
Can it really be true, as reported, that balding French President Francois Hollande spends 120,000 Euros per annum looking after his hair, equivalent to around 4 times the average annual earnings of a French worker? ...... Long live Socialism!
The ARMS shares are even said by some to have saved Apple in the early 1990s when they required a cash injection.
Also note: ARM had big expansion plans, including new offices on Fulbourn Road. They said they were going to double the workforce there last year - so the new owner's commitment to double the workforce is only a commitment to keep to current plans.
Genius fools waste other peoples' money, and persuade them they're not wasting it.
Why would she want to stop that?
I don't know much about Softbank: I can only hope that they're independent enough to be able to persuade licensees they'll treat them all equally.
(*) And it all happened by glorious accident, which Robin Saxby exploited fully.
There's no particular reason for the company to remain UK-based as it does very little manufacturing.
But ARM's at another scale. If you have a mobile phone, you're almost certain to have an ARM chip inside it, even if the chip is made by Apple, Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc. They also have significant markets in other arenas.
Over 10 billion ARM chips are made each year.
A vast amount of the value is in the fabrication, not the basic chip IP. But the fabrication technology also loses value quicker as new processes come online.
If I was Theresea May, I would be asking Softbank what they were going to being to ARM. What does the company gain from the takeover - especially as the doubling of jobs looks as though it was going to happen anyway. What are their long-term plans? I'd ask the ARM management the same thing.
If he's treated other MPs like this, it's no wonder that they are desperate to replace him.
With Juppe standing for the Republicans, the 1st round polls are roughly
Juppe 36
Le Pen 28
Hollande 13
Melenchon 12
The rest: single figures.
and the second round,
Juppe 68
Le Pen 32
That's pretty clear-cut and even nine months out, it'd take a lot to shift that outcome.
If it's Sarkozy, then the polls become
Le Pen 28
Sarkozy 23
Hollande 14
Melenchon 12
Bayrou 11
The rest single figures
In a 2nd-round run-off, it's a good deal closer, at about 58-42 to Sarkozy. That's still relatively comfortable. The shocker is the Hollande-Le Pen score, of which we've had none since April, but they were both:
Le Pen 53
Hollande 47
Now, a nine point lead for Sarkozy over Hollande in the first round is still relatively comfortable but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that that could change by April (though if it does, to Hollande's benefit, the socialist ought also to improve against Le Pen). Incumbents do usually get some swingback.
Betfair market hasn't really got going either, I'll have a nibble on Juppé while he's still odds against.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/#/politics/event/27360404/market?marketId=1.117179983
That said, I really don't see how she gets past Juppe.
The corporate takeover market is going to be busy for the next couple of years, there's a lot of large companies with an awful lot of cash in the bank not earning them much money. Apple are said to have over £175bn (or was it $175bn), more than the annual GDP of a lot of nations!
That doesn't mean that such regulation is actually in the national interest, or that it's always done well - but they're different questions.
I can't tell if that's just a lack of novelty, genuine 'what's the point' or a hardening of attitudes. The news outlets can't be relied on much either given the desire to squash down troubling views.
Post Baton Rouge and Dallas, we've got Cleveland RNC later today. It's been a crazy year so far - let's hope the latter breaks the pattern and there's no serious trouble.
https://twitter.com/_ignaciomolina/status/754811712092667904
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/07/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-corbyns-economics/
https://twitter.com/PHammondMP/status/754924912855379968
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/17/micheal-martin-says-ireland-could-see-reunification-referendum?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
(note: I'm an ARM shareholder, but neither myself or Mrs J work for them).
Other than that slight criticism, great post.
Democracy - 1976 to 2016 + one day
There's a bit of poetic licence, but you get the point!
Words fail me sometimes, they really do.
A lot of people are fed up with the pre-Corbyn era politics of (or which they see as) lots of egos all wanting for the top jobs but standing on similar policies. Cooper and Burnham bombed because they had nothing to say. Eagle has nothing to say, Smith is trying but it's early days.
The bottom line is that the Labour rebels need more than simply pointing to Corbyn's unelectability whilst taking for granted: a) that they stand for something, when (apart from not being Tories) they haven't worked out what, b) that they have a suitable alternative leader, when they don't, and c) that their managerial and leadership skills make them suitable people to run the country, when they have been demonstrating their own incompetence at every turn.
https://twitter.com/conflicts/status/754918478033854464
Also: the people he's rounding up are very unlikely all to have been in on the coup. It's a sweeping clean of the board.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/this-is-what-im-meant-to-be-doing-the-vicar-welcoming-muslims-to-church?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
The modern Labour Party is basically a coalition of three groups:
1. Corbyn and friends
2. Metropolitan middle-class lefties
3. White working classes.
Most of the members are in group 1, most of the MPs in group 2 and most of the voters in group 3.
An electable Labour Party need to focus on policies to help group 3, while also attracting a couple of million who voted for David Cameron. But groups 1 and 2 think they can change the world with hashtags and online petitions. Until group 2 can get their act together and actually be for a set of policies rather than just against group 1, then Corbyn and friends are going to be in charge.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/07/16/blue-collar-conservatism-is-back--and-it-takes-a-very-clever-wom/
"The blue-collar Conservatism that had been such an important component of the Thatcherite constituency had been replaced by a new condescension which found fresh ways of deriding the old enemies: the inarticulate yobs, the vulgar chavs, the provincial elderly with their quaint ideas about national pride, and the ambitious suburbanites trying to get on in life.
At this point, I must declare my own predilections. I am a metropolitan liberal. Those London dinner party prejudices are largely mine, too. In fact, I share pretty much all the social attitudes and values of the modernisers I have so brutally depicted. I am a member of the ethnic minority that Stalin notoriously described as “rootless cosmopolitans”. So I have to struggle with my own inclination to despise those who, with my usual preconceptions, would seem backward or ignorant."
Any market on him leaving office in the next three months so somebody sane, intelligent and sober can try and calm things down? There are rumours the real boss of the EU (Merkel) is fed up with him so any market looks value.
But this is worth noting
@MarkKleinmanSky: Notable that ARM take-out price is 41% premium to all-time high - takeovers of SAB Miller, BG, Cadbury much lower premium or even discount.
/edit as a comment on your post, don't forget also the mainly Muslim ethnic minorities, a big labour constituency, with different priorities from its traditional base.
If the EU does start to unravel his intransigence and arrogance will have played no small part in its downfall.
But looking at the TTIP (which gives the Americans the small matter of everything they want and gives us very little In return) the EU's negotiators really are pretty hopeless, and Juncker couldn't negotiate his way past a three year old with a water pistol. So their threat to play awkward isn't terribly convincing.
That's he thing about the secret service - their success are mostly secret.
I'm simply saying that there are clearly externalities involved in the situation. The government may decide that it is important than ARM is kept in the UK because of those externalities. If so, it is restricting the rights of private individuals to dispose of their property as they see fit - the value of the externalities should be shared rather than expropriated.
Personally, I don't see Sarkozy as the LR candidate - indeed, I'd make it a less than 20% chance. If the polls continue to look as they do now, he'll step back become Juppe's Prime Minister.
The other question is will Macron be the PS candidate?. I'd reckon that is a more than 50% chance.
All in Juppe remains the value play. I think he's at least a 60% chance to be the next French President, and maybe more.
Also a bit surprised by the ARM sale, although as I'm neither in finance nor tech it's not something I know much about.
On-topic: still hard for me to see le Pen winning (also, is it Le Pen, or le Pen?). But she has a better chance than Corbyn does of becoming PM.
I think Juncker is desperately trying to remain relevant as the Germans, Spanish, and co manoeuvre to have him removed.
Meanwhile, our new PM has appointed a SoS for Trade, an SoS for Business, an SoS for Brexit and fitted out a long haul aircraft for their use.