Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
I don't believe that the Falklands War was a marginal factor in bringing about Thatcher's 1983 victory - though it was far from being the whole story. Its effect for several years was to confer credibility on her polices as a whole - in that where voters had previously been highly critical of her performance they became much more inclined to give her the benefit of any doubt. There was some evidence of a Tory recovery in the polls by April 1982, but it is far from clear that it would have continued. Just four months earlier the Tories were smashed at the Crosby by election and barely a week before the invasion they lost Hillhead to Roy Jenkins. Whilst there is a good chance that Thatcher would have won anyway in 1983 , I feel sure that the scale of such a win would have been very different. I suspect she would have struggled to match her 1979 majority of 43 had she not had the assistance of Galtieri & Co.
So Justin, as a very able and knowledgeable historian, what would your attitude be towards a marker who marked at the top level any statement that the Conservative poll ratings continued to fall until the outbreak of the war and 'undoubtedly would have continued to fall further' and that 'but for the war, Thatcher would undoubtedly have been defeated at the next election'?
While holding up as wrong an answer that pointed out (with figures) the Conservative poll lead had been steadily if slowly recovering prior to the war and that while it undoubtedly helped Thatcher's personal popularity suggesting that perhaps Labour's extremely unpopular policy positions, split into two parties and disastrous implosion in the 1983 election campaign had more to do with their devastating defeat?
My attitude would be that such an individual is unfit to be a marker. But that individual is not only a marker, but is training and moderating other markers. It's no wonder that there are a few concerns.
I am in full agreement with you. Frankly the marker concerned sounds pretty ignorant.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
There are actually people that think over one million voters would have changed their minds and voted REMAIN is only Theresa May had joined Cameron and Osborne in putting the fear of God into them?
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
That's true, but in a country such as Britain there is clearly large-scale over-employment in the white collar sector - computerisation of offices hasn't reduced the amount of office work - and one wonders for how long it will be allowed to go on.
One thing to point out. The deep learning type AI we are seeing now (it is actually an old idea from the 90's, but computers couldn't undertake anything more than toy problems) is basically extremely good at teasing about patterns in massive data.
However, it is extremely crap at many tasks humans do with ease e.g. ask a adult to tidy a room, and they will put the garbage in the bin and put things say things like the kids toys in the right box (not saying cleaners are safe, but admin clerks aren't). What looks like trash to a computer via a camera, might actually be little Johnny's prized drawing of dad. The sort of AI at the moment really struggles with these kind of contextual tasks.
It seems at the moment a lot of the focus on his deep learning is rather than replace individuals, is to enable things to be done smarter e.g. google has cut their cut power usage in data centres, looking at the medical data to prioritize / make more efficent the way in which doctors view it.
Even the 'deep' AI we are seeing is not really AI in any meaningful sense. They are dumb-clever routines that mimic intelligence to solve limited-scope problems, without actually being in any way intelligent.
Witness the way not a single AI-complete problem has been solved.
Experts cannot even seem to agree what intelligence is ....
Sort of feels to me that genuine AI would involve computers programming themselves in response to stimuli from their environment - for humans we call that 'learning' by forming new neural paths.
Somehow I think we're a little way off that, and perhaps we want it to stay that way.
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
That's true, but in a country such as Britain there is clearly large-scale over-employment in the white collar sector - computerisation of offices hasn't reduced the amount of office work - and one wonders for how long it will be allowed to go on.
One thing to point out. The deep learning type AI we are seeing now (it is actually an old idea from the 90's, but computers couldn't undertake anything more than toy problems) is basically extremely good at teasing about patterns in massive data.
However, it is extremely crap at many tasks humans do with ease e.g. ask a adult to tidy a room, and they will put the garbage in the bin and put things say things like the kids toys in the right box (not saying cleaners are safe, but admin clerks aren't). What looks like trash to a computer via a camera, might actually be little Johnny's prized drawing of dad. The sort of AI at the moment really struggles with these kind of contextual tasks.
It seems at the moment a lot of the focus on his deep learning is rather than replace individuals, is to enable things to be done smarter e.g. google has cut their cut power usage in data centres, looking at the medical data to prioritize / make more efficent the way in which doctors view it.
Even the 'deep' AI we are seeing is not really AI in any meaningful sense. They are dumb-clever routines that mimic intelligence to solve limited-scope problems, without actually being in any way intelligent.
Witness the way not a single AI-complete problem has been solved.
Experts cannot even seem to agree what intelligence is ....
No absolutely. Hence why I talked about teasing out patterns in data.
.... The purpose of companies is to make profits for their shareholders. The purpose of unions is to look after their members. NEITHER of them either do or should be expected to put passengers first, except insofar as it assists or is at least neutral with respect to their primary purpose.
That's why key infrastructure like railways should be publicly owned, since the purpose of governments is to represent voters, including passengers....
Blimey. I thought that sort of utter nonsense disappeared 30 years ago.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
The difference between May and Corbyn is negligible with Remain voters and I know many Remain voters who blame Jezza for failing to get out the Labour vote. May also polls higher with Remain voters than both Cameron and Boris, who effectively led the Remain and Leave camps respectively and also polls higher than any other senior political figure with Leave voters so actually in retrospect her decision to remain neutral looks a sensible one
.... The purpose of companies is to make profits for their shareholders. The purpose of unions is to look after their members. NEITHER of them either do or should be expected to put passengers first, except insofar as it assists or is at least neutral with respect to their primary purpose.
That's why key infrastructure like railways should be publicly owned, since the purpose of governments is to represent voters, including passengers....
Blimey. I thought that sort of utter nonsense disappeared 30 years ago.
Dr Palmer has become RED NICK since he retired from politics in 2015. I wonder if he's always been waiting to release his Inner Lenin!
Absolutely correct! The move from Relative Marking to Absolute Marking circa 1988 makes it pretty pointless to compare A level/O level grades from the earlier period with what we see today.Back in the 1960s and 70s only the most academic pupils were entered for A levels at all, and a point that is often forgotten is that 30% of them failed to achieve the lowest E grade pass - ie only 70% of pupils taking A level exams then achieved a pass of any kind. Nowadays the pass rate appears to be 95% plus. That is something to bear in mind when we laugh at Corbyn's two E grades from the late 60s in that today he could expect a C/B for the same standard. Grade inflation at degree level has been rampant for years with a 2.1 long having become the 'normal' degree. Back in the 60s and 70s the 'normal' degree was a 2.2 despite entry to degree courses being much more difficult to achieve.On the whole I find it a bit sad in that to obtain a like for like comparison we have to knock a grade or two of today's published results to match them with what had been achieved by parents /grandparents.
Be careful about absolute/relative marking Justin, as grade boundaries are in fact adjusted year on year to compensate for this very feature. It still goes on, but it is less clear-cut than it used to be. For example, an E grade in History three years ago was 44% overall, last year it was 51%.
Corbyn might well have got a D but it's unlikely even with the fairly radical changes I have been railing against that he would have got a B. I doubt if he would have got grades good enough to get into university (also bear in mind they tend to ask for a minimum of three subjects).
Not sure I altogether agree about 2:1 becoming 'normal' either - although I agree they are becoming more common and I know there is now phenomenal pressure on lecturers to justify any grade below that. I usually told anyone who asked about the grades I gave out to get stuffed, but that isn't always an option if it's the PVC doing the asking.
What is certainly true is that undergraduate degrees are so common they are becoming devalued as a currency. My uncle (who went from shop floor to oil company executive - a very able man, far abler than I am) said that so far as he was concerned, the MA was the new BA.
.... The purpose of companies is to make profits for their shareholders. The purpose of unions is to look after their members. NEITHER of them either do or should be expected to put passengers first, except insofar as it assists or is at least neutral with respect to their primary purpose.
That's why key infrastructure like railways should be publicly owned, since the purpose of governments is to represent voters, including passengers....
Blimey. I thought that sort of utter nonsense disappeared 30 years ago.
Nick is trying to get selected for a seat. Keep that in mind. Hopefully the voters reject him again.
The move from Relative Marking to Absolute Marking circa 1988 makes it pretty pointless to compare A level/O level grades from the earlier period with what we see today.
The level of mathematical knowledge and understanding required for gaining a higher-tier maths GCSE today is similar to what was required for the 11-plus in the mid-1950s.
Mr. Owls, when I were a lad we had to type the words ourselves.
Of course, I couldn't afford a typewriter. I had to cut out and glue together headline letters from newspapers I found in the bin outside the chip shop.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
Remain ended up making very similar mistakes to the Yes2AV campaign. Namely, failure to understand and talk in the language of their target audience. This really was inexcusable when they were deployed against Matthew Elliot.
As an illustration of this, one of Remain's strongest cards was that the UK's international status and influence was perceived to be higher (incorrectly, in my view) inside the EU. So they badged themselves as Britain Stronger in Europe to take advantage of this.
And then did nothing.
What they could have done was appeal patriotically to centre-right Britons to vote Remain to preserve Britain as a great power, and fly the flag - in other words make Remain the patriotic choice. The closest they got to this was a quick advert that 'Britain doesn't quit', which even had me struggling to respond to it, but they didn't sustain this message and pulled it after a few days.
But the nation state and patriotism is so offensive to people like Will Straw, they totally ignored it, and resulted to insulting little Englanders and emphasising diversity instead.
The move from Relative Marking to Absolute Marking circa 1988 makes it pretty pointless to compare A level/O level grades from the earlier period with what we see today.
The level of mathematical knowledge and understanding required for gaining a higher-tier maths GCSE today is similar to what was required for the 11-plus in the mid-1950s.
Indeed. My A level maths teacher in the early 2000s would regularly set us problems from 1980s and 1990s exams as homework, on the basis that if we could deal with those then the far easier contemporary exam questions would be a doddle.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
Remain ended up making very similar mistakes to the Yes2AV campaign. Namely, failure to understand and talk in the language of their target audience. This really was inexcusable when they were deployed against Matthew Elliot.
As an illustration of this, one of Remain's strongest cards was that the UK's international status and influence was perceived to be higher (incorrectly, in my view) inside the EU. So they badged themselves as Britain Stronger in Europe to take advantage of this.
And then did nothing.
What they could have done was appeal patriotically to centre-right Britons to vote Remain to preserve Britain as a great power, and fly the flag - in other words make Remain the patriotic choice. The closest they got to this was a quick advert that 'Britain doesn't quit', which even had me struggling to respond to it, but they didn't sustain this message and pulled it after a few days.
But the nation state and patriotism is so offensive to people like Will Straw, they totally ignored it, and resulted to insulting little Englanders and emphasising diversity instead.
The other problem was that the campaign was instinctively defensive. Staying in is a less worse idea than leaving. At that point they accepted that staying in was a bad idea, just not as bad as the alternative. From then it was pushing a boulder up a very steep gradient.
Mr. Owls, when I were a lad we had to type the words ourselves.
Of course, I couldn't afford a typewriter. I had to cut out and glue together headline letters from newspapers I found in the bin outside the chip shop.
Glue? You lucky man!
I was writing with a sharpened feather and the juice of crushed berries mixed with soured wine
The move from Relative Marking to Absolute Marking circa 1988 makes it pretty pointless to compare A level/O level grades from the earlier period with what we see today.
The level of mathematical knowledge and understanding required for gaining a higher-tier maths GCSE today is similar to what was required for the 11-plus in the mid-1950s.
Indeed. My A level maths teacher in the early 2000s would regularly set us problems from 1980s and 1990s exams as homework, on the basis that if we could deal with those then the far easier contemporary exam questions would be a doddle.
Sounds like you had a similar maths teacher to me. We tried exam question from 60s all the way through to what was then the current standard for the same reason. You didn't need to see the year on the paper to know which era they came from.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
Bloke setting up speakers in the bandstand reckons there will be between 1,000 and 2,000 to see the Messiah. I am expecting him to approach via the water.Walking on it preferably!
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
n.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after you've gone.
We can afford really generous retirement incomes if we work for longer and retire for less. Not an easy sell, but I agree we are heading to something along the lines you suggest because the maths is so crushing even at "normalish" interest rates if we have to allow for the average person to live into their 90's.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
The working week is shorter than it used to be and we have Saturday off.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
Remain ended up making very similar mistakes to the Yes2AV campaign. Namely, failure to understand and talk in the language of their target audience. This really was inexcusable when they were deployed against Matthew Elliot.
As an illustration of this, one of Remain's strongest cards was that the UK's international status and influence was perceived to be higher (incorrectly, in my view) inside the EU. So they badged themselves as Britain Stronger in Europe to take advantage of this.
And then did nothing.
What they could have done was appeal patriotically to centre-right Britons to vote Remain to preserve Britain as a great power, and fly the flag - in other words make Remain the patriotic choice. The closest they got to this was a quick advert that 'Britain doesn't quit', which even had me struggling to respond to it, but they didn't sustain this message and pulled it after a few days.
But the nation state and patriotism is so offensive to people like Will Straw, they totally ignored it, and resulted to insulting little Englanders and emphasising diversity instead.
The other problem was that the campaign was instinctively defensive. Staying in is a less worse idea than leaving. At that point they accepted that staying in was a bad idea, just not as bad as the alternative. From then it was pushing a boulder up a very steep gradient.
They had economic head, but no heart.
The only bit of heart they had was to appeal to internationalists who were always going to vote Remain.
Conversely, Leave brilliantly converted the somewhat nebulous concept of sovereignty into 'take back control'.
Mr. Owls, when I were a lad we had to type the words ourselves.
Of course, I couldn't afford a typewriter. I had to cut out and glue together headline letters from newspapers I found in the bin outside the chip shop.
Glue? You lucky man!
I was writing with a sharpened feather and the juice of crushed berries mixed with soured wine
Mr. Owls, when I were a lad we had to type the words ourselves.
Of course, I couldn't afford a typewriter. I had to cut out and glue together headline letters from newspapers I found in the bin outside the chip shop.
You could afford glue we had to get ours from knackers yard.
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
The working week is shorter than it used to be and we have Saturday off.
It's longer than it was before industrialisation, and although it shortened in the late 19th century and most of the 20th century, it's getting longer now.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
My contention would be they will have jobs, just different jobs.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Bloke setting up speakers in the bandstand reckons there will be between 1,000 and 2,000 to see the Messiah. I am expecting him to approach via the water.Walking on it preferably!
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
Mr. Owls, when I were a lad we had to type the words ourselves.
Of course, I couldn't afford a typewriter. I had to cut out and glue together headline letters from newspapers I found in the bin outside the chip shop.
Glue? You lucky man!
I was writing with a sharpened feather and the juice of crushed berries mixed with soured wine
You had wine to sour!
Aye. We used to catch it every morning when they threw it out of the top floor window at us.
Bloke setting up speakers in the bandstand reckons there will be between 1,000 and 2,000 to see the Messiah. I am expecting him to approach via the water.Walking on it preferably!
Jezza better be careful, Messiah's tend to end up being crucified by the rulers and elites...
In hindsight I think Remain lost because the question being asked of the people of the UK was 'UK or EU?'. How can the answer then not be 'UK'? Actually Remain did a fabulous job (via Project Fear and the rest) to keep the loss narrow.
The only bit of heart they had was to appeal to internationalists who were always going to vote Remain.
Conversely, Leave brilliantly converted the somewhat nebulous concept of sovereignty into 'take back control'.
True, but even the head part was a failure, they accepted the Eurosceptic argument of the EU being a shithouse far too easily. If I had been in the remain campaign I would have made a list of the good non-economic things the EU brings to the UK. Focus tested them and said, the EU isn't shit, that's a Eurosceptic lie this is what the EU does for us in the UK. Obama's speech was actually quite good on that, but it was completely and utterly drowned out by the ill advised back of the line/queue comment which was seen as incendiary. Having an argument that the EU magnifies UK global reach and power was one that I think could have worked, using real exampled of the UK using the EU foreign policy tools to hit Putin where it hurts was a good example but there were loads more. In following the advice of Straw (and so many on here) about "it's the economy, stupid" means they concentrated on areas of the EU where the gains are spread unequally and has major downsides, downsides they had to accept very early on.
.... The purpose of companies is to make profits for their shareholders. The purpose of unions is to look after their members. NEITHER of them either do or should be expected to put passengers first, except insofar as it assists or is at least neutral with respect to their primary purpose.
That's why key infrastructure like railways should be publicly owned, since the purpose of governments is to represent voters, including passengers....
Blimey. I thought that sort of utter nonsense disappeared 30 years ago.
Nick is trying to get selected for a seat. Keep that in mind. Hopefully the voters reject him again.
He'll have to choose carefully given the rout that is about to befall Labour. Forget Broxtowe for a start.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
REMAIN didn't fail.
The stupid, racist, ignorant, riff raff that make up over 17m of UK voters did...
Not sure I altogether agree about 2:1 becoming 'normal' either
At Cambridge the median is a mid-2:1.
I would be slightly concerned if it wasn't given the quality of the candidates they enter.
But how far would you go? The mathematical knowledge and ability required even to get the lowest 2:1 at Cambridge would easily get someone a First at most British universities that offer maths. (Some of the material taught in the third year of the maths Tripos is considered Master's level even at Imperial.) Should Cambridge give two-thirds of students Firsts, just because of what things are like at other universities?
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century. Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education. Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as the....
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
My contention would be they will have jobs, just different jobs.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Yes. If only our new Chancellor seized the mantle of encouraging small businesses with initiatives such as raising the starting point of VAT to £150k and scrapping the HMRC plans to impose quarterly reporting on small businesses (i.e. under say £1m turnover).
Be careful about absolute/relative marking Justin, as grade boundaries are in fact adjusted year on year to compensate for this very feature. It still goes on, but it is less clear-cut than it used to be. For example, an E grade in History three years ago was 44% overall, last year it was 51%.
Corbyn might well have got a D but it's unlikely even with the fairly radical changes I have been railing against that he would have got a B. I doubt if he would have got grades good enough to get into university (also bear in mind they tend to ask for a minimum of three subjects).
Not sure I altogether agree about 2:1 becoming 'normal' either - although I agree they are becoming more common and I know there is now phenomenal pressure on lecturers to justify any grade below that. I usually told anyone who asked about the grades I gave out to get stuffed, but that isn't always an option if it's the PVC doing the asking.
What is certainly true is that undergraduate degrees are so common they are becoming devalued as a currency. My uncle (who went from shop floor to oil company executive - a very able man, far abler than I am) said that so far as he was concerned, the MA was the new BA.
Most people emerging from university degree courses today obtain a 2.1 - and that has now been the case for a generation or so. I well remember a friend graduating from a Russell Group university in 1975 with a 2.1 in Law. He was absolutely delighted - having written off his chances on the basis that so few were awarded.In his year there was a single First - about a dozen 2.1s - circa seventy 2.2s - and about twenty Thirds. Just over 20 years later in 1996/97 I was a postgraduate student on a Law course for non-Law graduates at a good university. I remember being taken aback by the degree results when published in that a good two thirds had ended up with a 2.1 - and this is nearly 20 years ago! As for A level grades , people such as Corbyn in the late 1960s who achieved a grade E pass were in the top 70% taking their exams and at a time when only the more academic pupils sat the exams at all. Today only circa 5% fail to manage a grade E pass. I would have thought that a pupil in the top 70% would now do better than a D - though that may vary between subjects. I have a friend who recently retired as a Professor in History & Politics. He has recounted the growing pressure at exam boards etc to mark students up and has said that a given piece of work he might have marked as 56% in the late 90s would now be given 64%. In his view grade inflation worked out at 1% every two years. Says it all I think.
The woman with the table has arrived! No idea what's going on it but it has arrived. Apparently has been speaking about transport in Derby. Presume we will get same speech.
I think the Parks Tuck Shop has been privatised £1.70 for a Diet Coke. On the bright side there is a Co-op.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
n.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I'd agree. The huge mistake was to not start moving the 65 (60 for women) pension age much much sooner (l980's? - certainly by the 90's) and allow such changes to be applied to company schemes. Govt's ducked it because it was unpopular, one assumes and it's soooo kickable down the road to land on some hapless minister's desk 15 years after.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
The working week is shorter than it used to be and we have Saturday off.
That sort of proves my point, though. We are working less, but are wealthier and have a much higher quality of life.
Price pressures we do face are largely in housing and transport, as well as state funded pensions and health, and that really is due to people themselves - too many in the 'wrong' places, and we are living much longer.
Even working full time at McDonalds at basic entry level as a crew member nets you £12k per year and 28 days paid holiday per year, with a 35 hour week, childcare vouchers and pension.
That's not a luxury lifestyle, obviously, but 100 years ago the equivalent person would probably be doing 50-60 hours a week just to earn enough to buy basic food for the family and scrape together the rent perhaps for just a room or two.
Those were the days! At the college of London University I attended, I was the first person for seven years to get a First in my subject, one taken by about 20-30 students each year.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
My contention would be they will have jobs, just different jobs.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Indeed. Support for retraining redundant workers is important, from computer skills classes to further and higher education with OU makes a huge difference to the costs of unemployment.
The big change to come will be people downskilling themselves in semi retirement in their 60s and 70s. Retailers such as B&Q and Waitrose have embraced this well, it will be important for other industries to do the same as pension provision decreases and life expectancy rises.
Edit: to add my 2pm to the pensions discussion, I know people who worked in white collar jobs for 32 years (from age 23 to 55) and are now retired on DB pensions with a life expectancy in retirement of longer than their service as engineers, pilots, civil servants etc. It's completely unsustainable even in the short term, the big question being what can we actually do about it.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
DC becomes today's problem which would need £20bn in additional borrowing right now, DB is tomorrow's problem and tomorrow's Chancellor can borrow £40bn to pay for it then.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
A publicly funded welfare state *of quality* can't be sustained in an environment where people are living for 20+ years at retirement, rather than 7 or 8, and the West is no longer global top dog and must earn its living on the global market. It just makes too much of a call on the NHS and pensions budgets, the growth of which never ends and never seems to be sufficient.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
I
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
The jobs change... There will still be manual work around - there will be more demand for Elderly care for instance...
Even working full time at McDonalds at basic entry level as a crew member nets you £12k per year and 28 days paid holiday per year, with a 35 hour week, childcare vouchers and pension.
McDonalds hire 80-90% of their staff on zero-hour contracts. I've never heard of a zero-hour contract that comes with a company pension.
Most people emerging from university degree courses today obtain a 2.1 - and that has now been the case for a generation or so. I well remember a friend graduating from a Russell Group university in 1975 with a 2.1 in Law. He was absolutely delighted - having written off his chances on the basis that so few were awarded.In his year there was a single First - about a dozen 2.1s - circa seventy 2.2s - and about twenty Thirds. Just over 20 years later in 1996/97 I was a postgraduate student on a Law course for non-Law graduates at a good university. I remember being taken aback by the degree results when published in that a good two thirds had ended up with a 2.1 - and this is nearly 20 years ago! As for A level grades , people such as Corbyn in the late 1960s who achieved a grade E pass were in the top 70% taking their exams and at a time when only the more academic pupils sat the exams at all. Today only circa 5% fail to manage a grade E pass. I would have thought that a pupil in the top 70% would now do better than a D - though that may vary between subjects. I have a friend who recently retired as a Professor in History & Politics. He has recounted the growing pressure at exam boards etc to mark students up and has said that a given piece of work he might have marked as 56% in the late 90s would now be given 64%. In his view grade inflation worked out at 1% every two years. Says it all I think.
In History on your figures he would still get a D. I can't speak for other subjects. Don't forget that there are many candidates doing A-levels now that would not have been a-level subjects before - accountancy, DT and catering all spring to mind - so again it's not clear-cut.
On my degree course (2004) I was one of eight people who got a first, approx. 15 people got a 2:1 and the other 54 got 2:2 or lower. Maybe Aberystwyth is just stricter in marking (and yes, we should have a national standard for universities @Dromedary although I know we don't).
Yes there is pressure to mark up, but don't underestimate the tendency to resist it as well. Academics can be right awkward sods when they chose to be. One of my lecturers would simply withhold his marks if anyone tried to persuade him to change them, and at that point the boards usually hurriedly changed their minds.
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
n.
The only long-term solution is the Australian one.
Compulsory saving for all. I think it's 12% right now.
Shifting the burden of risk onto the private individual and private sector, maintaining a basic safety net and allowing flexible part time working for those in their 70s, who want it, is probably where we are going.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
People have been forecasting that technology would lead to less work from the invention of the wheel onwards. So far with no observable success.
The working week is shorter than it used to be and we have Saturday off.
That sort of proves my point, though. We are working less, but are wealthier and have a much higher quality of life.
Price pressures we do face are largely in housing and transport, as well as state funded pensions and health, and that really is due to people themselves - too many in the 'wrong' places, and we are living much longer.
Even working full time at McDonalds at basic entry level as a crew member nets you £12k per year and 28 days paid holiday per year, with a 35 hour week, childcare vouchers and pension.
That's not a luxury lifestyle, obviously, but 100 years ago the equivalent person would probably be doing 50-60 hours a week just to earn enough to buy basic food for the family and scrape together the rent perhaps for just a room or two.
True, but average working hours were in the 40s in the 1980s, and there has been no significant reduction since, despite the period from 1980-date having been one of dramatic technological innovation that has transformed almost every workplace and every industry.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century.
Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education.
Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as they get bored, like feeling useful, like the extra cash and like the social aspect of having colleagues again.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
My contention would be they will have jobs, just different jobs.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Indeed. Support for retraining redundant workers is important, from computer skills classes to further and higher education with OU makes a huge difference to the costs of unemployment.
The big change to come will be people downskilling themselves in semi retirement in their 60s and 70s. Retailers such as B&Q and Waitrose have embraced this well, it will be important for other industries to do the same as pension provision decreases and live expectancy rises.
The big thing that seems to have been missed by many firms / people is this idea that you work 35hrs / week one day, you hit a certain age then you do 0hrs / week. Rather than staged retirement so that knowledge and experience can be utilised and passed on.
Those were the days! At the college of London University I attended, I was the first person for seven years to get a First in my subject, one taken by about 20-30 students each year.
A niece graduated two years ago with a First in English & Theology from a Russell Group university. She is a bright girl and I was very happy for her , but being so aware of the rampant grade inflation over the years I had to bite my tongue to avoid the temptation to point out that back in the 1970s she would almost certainly have emerged with a 2.1!
Even working full time at McDonalds at basic entry level as a crew member nets you £12k per year and 28 days paid holiday per year, with a 35 hour week, childcare vouchers and pension.
McDonalds hire 80-90% of their staff on zero-hour contracts. I've never heard of a zero-hour contract that comes with a company pension.
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
Which of the FTSE companies have a wide-ranging final salary/DB scheme (It is fine for a few individuals overall to market cap) and which are on DC ?
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
Only 2 FTSE 100 firms have DB schemes for new starters, the rest all have DC schemes though about half have DB schemes for existing workers
@Charles If interest rates stay like this many DB pensions are essentially never going to be paid in full.
He said it was unaffordable or some such, but if a DC scheme is unaffordable how on earth is a DB scheme affordable ?
.
.
Start work at 18-21, save for 40-47 years and retire for 25/30 years on reasonable income is never going to add up for the majority.
We need to stop seeing work as factory based drudgery aka 19th Century. Yes, there are some truly shit jobs out there that many people in them really hate and feel they have no alternative but to do. But I think the answer has to lie in flexing career switching and adult education. Plus working is usually a good thing. I know of two retirees in my (very wealthy) village who do 3 x 4-hour shifts at a Waitrose checkout each week as the....
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
My contention would be they will have jobs, just different jobs.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Yes. If only our new Chancellor seized the mantle of encouraging small businesses with initiatives such as raising the starting point of VAT to £150k and scrapping the HMRC plans to impose quarterly reporting on small businesses (i.e. under say £1m turnover).
Definitely. Companies who are a one man band doing consultancy or retail should be able to spend a couple of days a year doing their books, maybe one day more for their personal return. This means getting rid of a whole load of crap rules that are a boon for the accountancy industry but not for the struggling small business.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
Of course political campaigners love to big up their contribution, and after a major campaign there is always lots of analysis as to how the winning campaign pulled off their victory. Right down to the minutiae of particular slogans or speeches, or whether red was the better colour for leave etc etc.
But all the anecdotal evidence we had during the campaign was that the leave effort was disorganised, divided and chaotic. I don't think the result should change our judgement on that. Both campaigns were crap. With hindsight we know that the leading pollsters were adjusting their figures in ways that weren't, given the way voters actually turned out, appropriate and that leave probably were ahead from beginning to end. The campaign appears to have made little difference - as tends to be the case during most GEs.
Fascinating figures. The SNP it turns out are more popular among remainers than the Tories, Labour or MPs in ENGLAND. Sounds like they are best placed to be the new REMAIN party across the UK.
All of which re-enforces a theory that if the Party which Salmond/Sturgeon built (sensible left of centre, moderate and competent) has been across the UK they would have swept England as well as Scotland.
Except Leave voters rate the SNP even less favourably than Trump
Most people emerging from university degree courses today obtain a 2.1 - and that has now been the case for a generation or so. I well remember a friend graduating from a Russell Group university in 1975 with a 2.1 in Law. He was absolutely delighted - having written off his chances on the basis that so few were awarded.In his year there was a single First - about a dozen 2.1s - circa seventy 2.2s - and about twenty Thirds. Just over 20 years later in 1996/97 I was a postgraduate student on a Law course for non-Law graduates at a good university. I remember being taken aback by the degree results when published in that a good two thirds had ended up with a 2.1 - and this is nearly 20 years ago! As for A level grades , people such as Corbyn in the late 1960s who achieved a grade E pass were in the top 70% taking their exams and at a time when only the more academic pupils sat the exams at all. Today only circa 5% fail to manage a grade E pass. I would have thought that a pupil in the top 70% would now do better than a D - though that may vary between subjects. I have a friend who recently retired as a Professor in History & Politics. He has recounted the growing pressure at exam boards etc to mark students up and has said that a given piece of work he might have marked as 56% in the late 90s would now be given 64%. In his view grade inflation worked out at 1% every two years. Says it all I think.
In History on your figures he would still get a D. I can't speak for other subjects. Don't forget that there are many candidates doing A-levels now that would not have been a-level subjects before - accountancy, DT and catering all spring to mind - so again it's not clear-cut.
On my degree course (2004) I was one of eight people who got a first, approx. 15 people got a 2:1 and the other 54 got 2:2 or lower. Maybe Aberystwyth is just stricter in marking (and yes, we should have a national standard for universities @Dromedary although I know we don't).
Yes there is pressure to mark up, but don't underestimate the tendency to resist it as well. Academics can be right awkward sods when they chose to be. One of my lecturers would simply withhold his marks if anyone tried to persuade him to change them, and at that point the boards usually hurriedly changed their minds.
The E grade back in the 60s and 70s was quite a broad band I recall - 40% to 49% I believe.From memory D and C bands were narrow - 50 - 54% and 55- 59% respectively. I would have thought that a pupil at the upper end of the E band - say 47 -49% - would have been in the top 60% sitting the exam and that nowadays he would manage 55% plus.
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
Which of the FTSE companies have a wide-ranging final salary/DB scheme (It is fine for a few individuals overall to market cap) and which are on DC ?
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
Only 2 FTSE 100 firms have DB schemes for new starters, the rest all have DC schemes though about half have DB schemes for existing workers
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
Of course political campaigners love to big up their contribution, and after a major campaign there is always lots of analysis as to how the winning campaign pulled off their victory. Right down to the minutiae of particular slogans or speeches, or whether red was the better colour for leave etc etc.
But all the anecdotal evidence we had during the campaign was that the leave effort was disorganised, divided and chaotic. I don't think the result should change our judgement on that. Both campaigns were crap. With hindsight we know that the leading pollsters were adjusting their figures in ways that weren't, given the way voters actually turned out, appropriate and that leave probably were ahead from beginning to end. The campaign appears to have made little difference - as tends to be the case during most GEs.
I agree with a lot of that. – Biggest upset I think was the million extra voters who voted for Leave, they appear to have been flying under the radar of every pollster and pundit for years.
hilary is up 52-38 in virginia. Looks like thats a safe dem state at the moment. Trump's route to 270 looking virtually impossible
and nbc has hilary leading trump 50-41 nationally. 3 weeks after the convention, looks like more than a convention boost
I suggest It was Trump's reaction to the DNC - specifically his inability to accept a few days when he wouldn't be the lead political story - that has turned what started as a convention boost into what appears to be a lasting and potentially decisive margin.
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
Which of the FTSE companies have a wide-ranging final salary/DB scheme (It is fine for a few individuals overall to market cap) and which are on DC ?
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
Only 2 FTSE 100 firms have DB schemes for new starters, the rest all have DC schemes though about half have DB schemes for existing workers
It's because of the collapse in interest rates. Future liabilities are discounted by the risk free return rate, which is usually set by 10 year government bonds. The collapse in gilt yields sends future liabilities soaring.
Which of the FTSE companies have a wide-ranging final salary/DB scheme (It is fine for a few individuals overall to market cap) and which are on DC ?
All with a mass DB scheme are surely in for a long term mullering. Is there a list anywhere ?
Only 2 FTSE 100 firms have DB schemes for new starters, the rest all have DC schemes though about half have DB schemes for existing workers
Nick is trying to get selected for a seat. Keep that in mind. Hopefully the voters reject him again.
An unchracheristically churlish comment, given that I've said here about 20 times that I'm not trying to get selected to stand for Parliament again.
Your support for Corbyn has put me right off. His and his supporters attitudes towards women and Jewish people are disgraceful. I don't understand how or why you would support such a man.
If AI takes off there will be less work to go around. What then?
Economic growth = more productivity or more resoure. AI allows extra productivity for same cost so..
We move to a more leisure based economy around mental games and sports, creativity in arts and music, extra face-to-face services and social care/human support.
The economy restructures. Always.
That's good and I don't disagree. The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
My contention would be they will have jobs, just different jobs.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Indeed. Support for retraining redundant workers is important, from computer skills classes to further and higher education with OU makes a huge difference to the costs of unemployment.
The big change to come will be people downskilling themselves in semi retirement in their 60s and 70s. Retailers such as B&Q and Waitrose have embraced this well, it will be important for other industries to do the same as pension provision decreases and live expectancy rises.
The big thing that seems to have been missed by many firms / people is this idea that you work 35hrs / week one day, you hit a certain age then you do 0hrs / week. Rather than staged retirement so that knowledge and experience can be utilised and passed on.
Absolutely. They give you a carriage clock and wave goodbye, yet continue to pay you 1/2 or 2/3 of your salary for life. It would work for skilled trades or professions (plumbers, doctors) who work an hour or a day at a time, more difficult for say a project manager or a head of department - but not impossible if thought through and accepted by companies.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
Ha! I actually wrote such an article in the days after the result and sent it in. Sadly, there was too much happening.
I may resurrect it and if Mike chooses to publish it you can then critique it!
Nick is trying to get selected for a seat. Keep that in mind. Hopefully the voters reject him again.
An unchracheristically churlish comment, given that I've said here about 20 times that I'm not trying to get selected to stand for Parliament again.
Your support for Corbyn has put me right off. His and his supporters attitudes towards women and Jewish people are disgraceful. I don't understand how or why you would support such a man.
Jezza has a lot of bad points but...
He was elected Labour leader with a huge mandate less than twelve months ago. How the PLP have behaved in recent weeks has been disgracefully undemocratic... Both to Jez and their reaction to Brexit.
Brexit couldn't have happened without Jezza and Owen Who is trying to become leader on a platform is effectively ignoring or reversing the referendum.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
Of course political campaigners love to big up their contribution, and after a major campaign there is always lots of analysis as to how the winning campaign pulled off their victory. Right down to the minutiae of particular slogans or speeches, or whether red was the better colour for leave etc etc.
But all the anecdotal evidence we had during the campaign was that the leave effort was disorganised, divided and chaotic. I don't think the result should change our judgement on that. Both campaigns were crap. With hindsight we know that the leading pollsters were adjusting their figures in ways that weren't, given the way voters actually turned out, appropriate and that leave probably were ahead from beginning to end. The campaign appears to have made little difference - as tends to be the case during most GEs.
As soon as I saw the Turkey leaflet and the £350m/week shite, I ignored the Leave campaign. The £4,300, Little Englander and punishment budget gambits confirmed my contempt for Remain's efforts.
I have one anecdote; my future father-in-law switched from Remain to Leave based on Boris's contribution in the Wembley debate.
hilary is up 52-38 in virginia. Looks like thats a safe dem state at the moment. Trump's route to 270 looking virtually impossible
and nbc has hilary leading trump 50-41 nationally. 3 weeks after the convention, looks like more than a convention boost
I suggest It was Trump's reaction to the DNC - specifically his inability to accept a few days when he wouldn't be the lead political story - that has turned what started as a convention boost into what appears to be a lasting and potentially decisive margin.
Edit/ p.s. And there was probably some drag on the Dems from the Sanders split, which has now unwound
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
Of course political campaigners love to big up their contribution, and after a major campaign there is always lots of analysis as to how the winning campaign pulled off their victory. Right down to the minutiae of particular slogans or speeches, or whether red was the better colour for leave etc etc.
But all the anecdotal evidence we had during the campaign was that the leave effort was disorganised, divided and chaotic. I don't think the result should change our judgement on that. Both campaigns were crap. With hindsight we know that the leading pollsters were adjusting their figures in ways that weren't, given the way voters actually turned out, appropriate and that leave probably were ahead from beginning to end. The campaign appears to have made little difference - as tends to be the case during most GEs.
I agree with a lot of that. – Biggest upset I think was the million extra voters who voted for Leave, they appear to have been flying under the radar of every pollster and pundit for years.
Two in the Cyclefree household (not me) got the result right despite, in one case, voting Remain. They did so because they are the ones who have spent most time in the North West and where pretty much everyone they encountered (and we are talking about different generations and a range of classes here - not just the white WWC meme so beloved of some) was for Leave.
Sometimes just spending time away from London is enough to give you a different perspective. Not done anything like often enough by those who make the most noise.
Remain voters prefer Corbyn over May? So it's official then Remain voters are bonkers and have terrible judgement.
I know a few remain voters who pin the blame of losing in May. Her lack of support for the campaign and her refusal to publicly back the EU is seen as a key factor in their loss. Her speech about leaving the ECHR if we voted to stay was another inflammatory message to hardcore EUphiles.
Remain are happy to blame anyone but themselves for losing.
Well and the fact that the EU is a big steaming pile of horsehit. I actually want to write a bit if a post mortem on the failures of the remain campaign as a warning for the government on how not to campaign for 2020.
We had a large number of articles on PB about how the LEAVE campaign was failing in the lead up to the actual vote. There were very few articles about REMAIN's failures. Odd that?
Of course political campaigners love to big up their contribution, and after a major campaign there is always lots of analysis as to how the winning campaign pulled off their victory. Right down to the minutiae of particular slogans or speeches, or whether red was the better colour for leave etc etc.
But all the anecdotal evidence we had during the campaign was that the leave effort was disorganised, divided and chaotic. I don't think the result should change our judgement on that. Both campaigns were crap. With hindsight we know that the leading pollsters were adjusting their figures in ways that weren't, given the way voters actually turned out, appropriate and that leave probably were ahead from beginning to end. The campaign appears to have made little difference - as tends to be the case during most GEs.
As soon as I saw the Turkey leaflet and the £350m/week shite, I ignored the Leave campaign. The £4,300, Little Englander and punishment budget gambits confirmed my contempt for Remain's efforts.
I have one anecdote; my future father-in-law switched from Remain to Leave based on Boris's contribution in the Wembley debate.
Yes, but then my mother was shifted from leave to remain due to the campaign, mainly Cameron and the risk stuff. Individuals will change their minds during a campaign, but it is hard to find an example of a campaign that has dramatically changed the position at the start? The AV referendum is possibly such an example, which we've passed over because there have been so few PB threads on it?
''Sometimes just spending time away from London is enough to give you a different perspective. Not done anything like often enough by those who make the most noise. ''
That why the pre-Brexit pieces by the Guardian's John Harris were so good. He actually bothered to leave his desk and ask factory workers in Stoke. And when they said 'leave' he did not patronise them or call them racist, but was genuinely interested in why. And when he got the reply, he did not dismiss it out of hand.
Comments
Somehow I think we're a little way off that, and perhaps we want it to stay that way.
Just speaking to my mate who is at a Cirbyn rally as we speak.About 3K in Derby he estimates.
Owen Smith's "free ice cream" event has them queuing all round the van.
Corbyn might well have got a D but it's unlikely even with the fairly radical changes I have been railing against that he would have got a B. I doubt if he would have got grades good enough to get into university (also bear in mind they tend to ask for a minimum of three subjects).
Not sure I altogether agree about 2:1 becoming 'normal' either - although I agree they are becoming more common and I know there is now phenomenal pressure on lecturers to justify any grade below that. I usually told anyone who asked about the grades I gave out to get stuffed, but that isn't always an option if it's the PVC doing the asking.
What is certainly true is that undergraduate degrees are so common they are becoming devalued as a currency. My uncle (who went from shop floor to oil company executive - a very able man, far abler than I am) said that so far as he was concerned, the MA was the new BA.
Owen Who?
Of course, I couldn't afford a typewriter. I had to cut out and glue together headline letters from newspapers I found in the bin outside the chip shop.
As an illustration of this, one of Remain's strongest cards was that the UK's international status and influence was perceived to be higher (incorrectly, in my view) inside the EU. So they badged themselves as Britain Stronger in Europe to take advantage of this.
And then did nothing.
What they could have done was appeal patriotically to centre-right Britons to vote Remain to preserve Britain as a great power, and fly the flag - in other words make Remain the patriotic choice. The closest they got to this was a quick advert that 'Britain doesn't quit', which even had me struggling to respond to it, but they didn't sustain this message and pulled it after a few days.
But the nation state and patriotism is so offensive to people like Will Straw, they totally ignored it, and resulted to insulting little Englanders and emphasising diversity instead.
Enjoy the rally.
How scientific rigour helped Team GB’s saddle-sore cyclists on their medal trail
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/aug/15/team-gb-cycling-saddle-sore-medals
Boardman said last night that the Brits don't wear gloves, instead use liquid chalk.
I was writing with a sharpened feather and the juice of crushed berries mixed with soured wine
Luxury.
Every morning, the chip shop owner would set his rabid dogs on us. Had to use the foam from their jaws to stick the letters together.
The question is 'How is the country's wealth distributed to those who now don't have jobs'?
The only bit of heart they had was to appeal to internationalists who were always going to vote Remain.
Conversely, Leave brilliantly converted the somewhat nebulous concept of sovereignty into 'take back control'.
We've been worrying about technology putting people out of work for hundreds of years now. The bigger problem is, and always has been, creating a stable environment for new job creation.
Knackers yard slaughtering wi bear ands for us.
Kids today don't know theyre born
The stupid, racist, ignorant, riff raff that make up over 17m of UK voters did...
As for A level grades , people such as Corbyn in the late 1960s who achieved a grade E pass were in the top 70% taking their exams and at a time when only the more academic pupils sat the exams at all. Today only circa 5% fail to manage a grade E pass. I would have thought that a pupil in the top 70% would now do better than a D - though that may vary between subjects.
I have a friend who recently retired as a Professor in History & Politics. He has recounted the growing pressure at exam boards etc to mark students up and has said that a given piece of work he might have marked as 56% in the late 90s would now be given 64%. In his view grade inflation worked out at 1% every two years. Says it all I think.
I think the Parks Tuck Shop has been privatised £1.70 for a Diet Coke.
On the bright side there is a Co-op.
Price pressures we do face are largely in housing and transport, as well as state funded pensions and health, and that really is due to people themselves - too many in the 'wrong' places, and we are living much longer.
Even working full time at McDonalds at basic entry level as a crew member nets you £12k per year and 28 days paid holiday per year, with a 35 hour week, childcare vouchers and pension.
That's not a luxury lifestyle, obviously, but 100 years ago the equivalent person would probably be doing 50-60 hours a week just to earn enough to buy basic food for the family and scrape together the rent perhaps for just a room or two.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3742454/Now-Professor-Shyster-hounded-hundreds-innocent-British-soldiers-dock-demands-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN.html
I had to sell my teeth to afford the gruel.
Mr. Owls, we used to dream of fighting bare-knuckle in a knackers' yard. Would've been like playing at Lords to us.
Anyway, much as I enjoy a good Four Yorkshiremen sketch, the hound won't walk herself. Cycling kicks off around quarter past two.
Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1
Do any of these people have jobs? https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/765510940548882433 …
The big change to come will be people downskilling themselves in semi retirement in their 60s and 70s. Retailers such as B&Q and Waitrose have embraced this well, it will be important for other industries to do the same as pension provision decreases and life expectancy rises.
Edit: to add my 2pm to the pensions discussion, I know people who worked in white collar jobs for 32 years (from age 23 to 55) and are now retired on DB pensions with a life expectancy in retirement of longer than their service as engineers, pilots, civil servants etc. It's completely unsustainable even in the short term, the big question being what can we actually do about it.
On my degree course (2004) I was one of eight people who got a first, approx. 15 people got a 2:1 and the other 54 got 2:2 or lower. Maybe Aberystwyth is just stricter in marking (and yes, we should have a national standard for universities @Dromedary although I know we don't).
Yes there is pressure to mark up, but don't underestimate the tendency to resist it as well. Academics can be right awkward sods when they chose to be. One of my lecturers would simply withhold his marks if anyone tried to persuade him to change them, and at that point the boards usually hurriedly changed their minds.
A pathetic 6 inch square whiteboard has just been erected.
"Politics in the park at with JC 2.30pm"
Not even big enough to get Messiah on had to shorten to JC.
And with that, back to the schemes of work.
and nbc has hilary leading trump 50-41 nationally. 3 weeks after the convention, looks like more than a convention boost
But all the anecdotal evidence we had during the campaign was that the leave effort was disorganised, divided and chaotic. I don't think the result should change our judgement on that. Both campaigns were crap. With hindsight we know that the leading pollsters were adjusting their figures in ways that weren't, given the way voters actually turned out, appropriate and that leave probably were ahead from beginning to end. The campaign appears to have made little difference - as tends to be the case during most GEs.
https://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/opinion/james-frayne-tory-eurosceptics-now-fall-three-tribes
On the topic of degrees, my beloved Jenny recounted that in her cohort (French @ UCL 1976), one person was awarded a first; she was one of three 2:1s.
I have a first, but it's from the OU and I didn't graduate until I was 41, so doesn't really signify.
Mind you it is a park!!
I suspect secretly you've always been a RED and now you've retired you're free to release your inner Lenin!
https://twitter.com/noonanjo/status/765510230755119104?s=09
I may resurrect it and if Mike chooses to publish it you can then critique it!
He was elected Labour leader with a huge mandate less than twelve months ago. How the PLP have behaved in recent weeks has been disgracefully undemocratic... Both to Jez and their reaction to Brexit.
Brexit couldn't have happened without Jezza and Owen Who is trying to become leader on a platform is effectively ignoring or reversing the referendum.
I have one anecdote; my future father-in-law switched from Remain to Leave based on Boris's contribution in the Wembley debate.
Sometimes just spending time away from London is enough to give you a different perspective. Not done anything like often enough by those who make the most noise.
That why the pre-Brexit pieces by the Guardian's John Harris were so good. He actually bothered to leave his desk and ask factory workers in Stoke. And when they said 'leave' he did not patronise them or call them racist, but was genuinely interested in why. And when he got the reply, he did not dismiss it out of hand.
It's called journalism.