The red deer’s mating habits are an exemplar of Darwinian selection. Every autumn virile stags, their veins coursing with testosterone, compete to claim the right to the herd’s females. The battles can be fearsome, sometimes even deadly. The victor, the alpha male, then claims the right to father the next generation, thus perpetuating his genes.
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If the Coronavirus cannot be contained and the issue rumbles on, this year's primary/election season may well again be dominated by the twin issues of healthcare and borders/societal control, ramped-up to 11 on the dial. This probably helps the hard left Democrats, and Trump.
We are Italy in disguise.
They were just embarrassing yesterday. Waste of sixty quid, that was.
The quickest way to close the gap between London and other English and Welsh cities would be to get a basic trade deal for goods post Brexit that excludes financial services but that would only be as a result of weakening the city of London mainly rather than boosting those other cities beyond where they already were
How on Earth did I guess @AlistairM wrote this just from that first paragraph?
First time I’ve ever heard a Welsh crowd cheer when the opposition get the ball.
First time I’ve seen them leaving early, too!
However, I am still going to read it.
I do think that London has squeezed out opportunity from the others in one sense. If you have a business that is anything to with either Government or the financial markets (plus probably a range of other sectors concentrated in the capital), you more or less need to be near London. I work for a charity whose main objective is to influence public policy; it would be cheaper to move to, say, Liverpool, but it would be much harder to be effective. That's a special case, of course, but there must be thousands of such cases relating to core London activities.
Which doesn't help directly, but it bears out Alastair's thesis that cities need to have a focus, to be clearly best at something. Once that happens, businesses and jobs related to it will move to it.
On the topic, I will throw an idea out there which may help, namely that these cities should reintroduce their own stock exchanges with the aim of using local capital to invest in local businesses. A number of these cities used to have them until the stock exchanges were consolidated together in 1973. Not only could these exchanges be used to promote local investment in the regions but they would also create a ripple effect in services such as accountancy and legal work just as happened with London and Edinburgh.
Fra 24 - May 14
All UK pensions above a certain "Rich barsteward level" would have their "excess" invested in special EU bonds. The money would be used by the EU as they saw fit to invest in European development.
In return we get financial services and fish.
I'm quite sure that the the well off would view this as a noble investment.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2020-battleground-tracker-what-could-happen-in-iowa-monday-2020-02-02/
uses a mixture of Iowa polling and large-sample projections from the national demographics (hmm) to show a good deal about second preferences. Biden does well from these, though his supporters are not as certain as other candidates.
The other poll shows Biden's firewall in South Carolina apparently crumbling with Steyer (yes, Steyer) making deep inroads into the black vote:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/sc/south_carolina_democratic_presidential_primary-6824.html
How many of us are green on Steyer, eh?
https://twitter.com/RichLowry/status/1224014192925192192
London lawyers & accountants & consultants play an important role in facilitating laundering. London is the international centre of kleptocracy and tax evasion.
London and its criminal classes got fat. Meanwhile, a third of Angolans get by on less than two dollars a day. And Meeks pontificates about how London "over performs".
The new normal....
I don't know what we can conclude from this in terms of how to address core city underperformance though.
So there's an impasse.
The solution of course is to inflate these 'Core Cities' to include their neighbouring districts. But Labour's 2016 'Nottingham Declaration' means this is resisted. So they'll continue to under-perform.
Bunnco - Your Man on the Spot
Warrington has had a lot of growth in recent years which is definitely related to being overflow from Liverpool and Manchester.
You’d have thought the great financial crisis would have poleaxed Britain’s great financial centres. The opposite is true: both London and Edinburgh have widened the gap.
Given they all got bailed out by the tax payer, no, I wouldn't have expected London to suffer from the financial crisis.
and yes wining an election on the policy without the results will be hard. and would probably result in labour winning and reversing any changes.
But lets not be too defeatist when Singapore became indipendante, it briefly tried command and control, high taxes and regulation, it failed abysmally and then, only then did they try free markets. The smaller a political unit the easier to identify good or bad polices and the quicker to make changes.
For anybody cureose about the Singapore in the north sea I can recommend this:
https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=2125&fbclid=IwAR0Z-Xd78SkiRspDuVlASN6O2sjPcuUd557XSzdi46GWlALB9QIaxZ9rFAY
All that says to me is that you don’t have a clue but you have firm opinions.
I also note over double the income per person and only a modest increase hours worked.
No, it's not. The West Midlands is anything but well connected.
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/transport/2020/01/27/how-hs2-billions-could-be-spent-on-our-region/
"The productivity of the West Midlands is a third lower than an equivalent city such as Lyon in France. He said this was directly linked to the difficulty workers had in travelling through the region to and from work. He adds: “Work would have probably already started earlier had it not be for difficulties experienced in implementing Network Rail’s investment programme since 2015. “In a sense many of these projects have already been identified and a number are probably already, or close to so-called 'shovel ready' status. As both the local network, the national network and any high speed network are all attempting to offer connections to apparently the same economic hubs and population centres there should not be a any conflict of objectives, provided everyone can identify them. “The most urgent problem are the severe pressures being experienced across the Midlands on commutes to/from the principal cities and towns of the region. For instance, during the rush-hour the effective economic catchment area of the West Midlands Combined Authority, which the OECD estimate should be 1.9 million people, shrinks from 1.3 million to 900,000. “The inadequacy of current local transport infrastructure is severely compromising productivity.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/career-psychopath-dominic-cummings-weeps-as-his-dream-comes-true-n7256j0b8
That's why London in theory has been doing very well with all the money coming in and out of the accounts of big multinational companies headquartered there.
You give Man City a 21 point deduction and they are in 14th place.
You give fourth placed Chelsea a 21 point deduction and they end up in the relegation zone.
You give Manchester United a 21 point deduction and they are bottom of the league.
(Admittedly, you still need to treat London as a special case, as it was also clobbered.)
https://www.ft.com/content/0debe1cc-20ac-11e9-b2f7-97e4dbd3580d
I was thinking of more power to city and county level mostly, but you point is valid
The answer to this conundrum is to a) make the core cities better places to live for young graduates for a much lower cost of living than London (nicer commercial areas, parks, bars, restaurants, pop up shops etc) and to b) have additional skilled migrant visas for places outside London.
Oh my days.
For a country as large as Britain to emulate Switzerland it will need to be the preffered banker of 1.75 billion people, basically the old British Empire.
If there is a country that Britain should emulate its Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Switzerland#Economic_sectors
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-criticised-on-education-following-world-rankings-hz09ctstq
Keep your Tory lies for dummies.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/20200202_IA_2.pdf
Sanders 28 +4
Warren 21 +2
Buttigieg 15 -2
Biden 15 nc
Klobuchar 8 -3
On topic, really interesting article. London is a globalisation winner, while some of the other cities are globalisation relative losers. Despite increasing protectionism in the world, globalisation is still the way to success.
No true Lancastrian would have put Steak and Kidney Pudding that low down.
* edit not a massive Scotch egg fan.
Singapore has extremely high savings rates, while the UK has possibly the lowest in the developed world. That's a major, major difference. I struggle to see how you could get from our current situation (negligible savings, economy supported by domestic consumption) to a Singaporean situation (extremely high levels of saving, economy supported by exports) without an extremely painful transition period.
Singapore has a genuinely outstanding education system. We have an OK one. Hopefully we can make it better, but this is a multi-decade thing.
I would love to see us become more like Singapore. But it would require that the entire structure of the British economy changed to be more like Germany or Switzerland. (I.e., we'd move away from domestic consumption and towards exports.)
Yet the fiscal policy of the government, i.e. running extremely loose policies, will boost domestic demand and worsen the the UK's imbalances. Structural things like infrastructure or trade agreements count for little if the government and people continue to spend more than they earn.