The data says as much, there's a couple of areas that are worrying but most of the country is close to R=1 already.
He probably meant "it won't take much longer", or "the current measures are enough to get us there"... but clumsy to leave it at that, if the tweet is a fair representation of how he put it.
There's a related risk here, though. Too much focus on R=1 is dangerous. If R=0.95, the number of people infected will not be falling, so it'll still be burning through the population. If your main concern is with hospital capacity, R<1 is a win. But if your aim is to stop people getting sick, it should not be something that ought to get much fanfare.</p>
Yes, I agree with that. I also think that the government are fixing the wrong problem, which means we're never going to see large enough drops in the R for cases to fall by a significant number. At 0.95 it's a halving time of around 20-24 days, from 20k cases per day it would take 5 cycles to get cases below 1k per day nationally which is up to 120 days of whatever measures are necessary for R=0.95, and that's a big ask for those regions under tier 2 and 3 restrictions.
Following on from Rashford and Burnham I anticipate Sean Ryder's ideas on reform of social care to be the next Manc plan to make the government look like total arses.
The first two of those are definitely twisting Boris's melon, man.
If Marcus Rashford is so dedicated to these causes, he should give up football and stand for election
Perhaps only after MPs are made to give up their second jobs / consultancy fees / after dinner speeches / newspaper columns / directorates.
What they should do is give MPs a massive reset and then say "this is the only job you are doing" like what would happen with a normal employer.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, which is the problem we have with the MP system at the moment
MPs are in the top 10% of earners, even in London.
For the job they do ie basically social work for constituents and scrutiny of legislation and the executive and voting on bills that is about right and of course the only qualification you need to be an MP is to win most votes in a parliamentary constituency.
The PM and Cabinet could be paid a bit more though as they are not in the top 1% of earners despite the responsibilities they have
PMs are very comfortably in the top 1% of lifetime earners, when you consider their post office earnings. How much of that is down to their talent (or otherwise) and how much is a payoff for influencing all current and future PMs I shall leave to the reader to decide.
Some are like Blair, though I am not sure Brown would be in the top 1% by assets or May.
However Jacinda Ardern is paid almost double what Boris is paid and Merkel also 3 times what the UK PM gets
Gerhard Schroeder seems to be coining it in, again with Putin connections, so yes we are not the only country where our politicians get paid by the state in real time and lobbyists and vested interests after they quit.
Brown got paid over £1m in 2013 alone, and has a media estimated net worth of $15m.
"Early voters in Texas have already exceeded the total number of people statewide who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — and the election is still 14 days away."
This is absolutely crazy, maybe time to lump on the Democrats in Texas. I wonder if the number of votes cast in Texas will top the total number of registered voters in the state.
Key question is who is voting.
In NC, yes registered Democrats are beating the Republicans handily but the under 40s have only cast 20% of early votes vs their 40% share of the electorate. Many older registered Democrats actually vote Republican now.
I said under Sunak not Boris and only with a FTA with the EU, if we go to No Deal under Boris then obviously the Tories will continue to do much worse in London than in Leave regions while that stays the case
Boris will certainly not be doing well in "Leave regions" if the economy is in the toilet due to No Deal. You're deluded if you think otherwise.
Even if we had a 1997 result in 2024 and Boris was leader on No Deal terms the Tories would still win almost certainly more seats percentage wise in Leave areas than in London which was what I said
Well obviously. That isn't even worth stating. The Tories only hold 29% of London seats.
Following on from Rashford and Burnham I anticipate Sean Ryder's ideas on reform of social care to be the next Manc plan to make the government look like total arses.
The first two of those are definitely twisting Boris's melon, man.
If Marcus Rashford is so dedicated to these causes, he should give up football and stand for election
Why? Can you only be dedicated to something if you are an MP?
Because he is effectively driving Government policy without us (the voting public) having a say in the manner.
Call me quaint but, as I mentioned before, what he is doing is the equivalent of a wealthy donor using their influence to push through an agenda without proper scrutiny or the chance for people to vote on the matter.
So he’s operating exactly how this government likes to operate - without scrutiny or accountability and on the basis of who you know and PR...
He's hardly operating without scrutiny, as his entire campaign appears to be public. How is that different from any other single issue campaigner (other than he is pretty well off and famous) ?
Fought for his people and got exactly what the Government had offered.
It's a political win for Burnham. Anyone who loses their job in GM now can be told in all candour that the GM mayor fought hard for more but it was Westminster that snapped the purse shut. That will be some solid foundations for Labour campaigns in the area for years to come.
How many people does G Manchester have. How much would the £65 million pro rata to every other Tier 3 hotspot cost, how much nationwide ?
£1.6bn spread over a few months. It's a nothing amount of money and Andy Burnham is right, we shouldn't be ordering businesses to close and then providing basically no support.
I'd genuinely love to hear what Marcus Rashford's views are on monetary policy.
Surely this government would value Rashford's views regardless, given their contempt for the views of so-called "experts"?
Absolutely, and I have said for years that the complete lack of engagement with the subject of monetary policy is a disgrace.
I might be doing Marcus a disservice, but I suspect his focus is solely on the giving of money rather than on the raising of money.
What he is keen on is giving away other peoples money as his does not consider that it is a parents reposnsibility to feed a child, he considers that it is the Governments
So if a child is unlucky enough to have irresponsible or feckless parents then tough luck, the child should suffer and have chosen different parents?
Of course governments have a responsibility for the welfare of all children, regardless of their parents' capacity or willingness to do the right thing.
If parents do not feed their children then the children should be taken into Local Authority care.
Tories , you just have to admire their caring sharing attitudes.
It's a surprisingly decent article from Monbiot. If he could tone down the outrage by 50%, and increase the factual analysis by 10% or so, it would actually be very good indeed.
An excellent article from Monbiot overall, I would say. What is does highlight is the huge influence of McKinsey's, as the model all other elite management consultancies follow, that many companies have actually adapted to in order to meet its expectations without running contracts with it, and that has run huge numbers of government functions.
This largely unknown organisation to most people has had huge political and cultural influence over the last 40 years - it's high time its supposedly 'apolitical' influence was more widely understood.
This is getting into lizard illuminati territory.
McKinsey is a high-end strategy consultancy but isn't the model all management consultancies follow - I know because I've worked for several - and isn't secretly pulling strings behind the scenes. That's not how they work.
The Big4 do operate as something of a soft cartel and that's because with their size, profile and reach (they audit almost all the FTSE100 and the vast majority of the FTSE250, plus have people working throughout all Government departments) work just comes through the door to them, and they are very good at leveraging. The Government likes hiring them as "what more could I have done?" in a crisis than hiring the Big4?
It's a cosy merry-go-round but it's not a conspiracy. Best thing Government could do is to lift some of the restrictions they have on hiring the best project and commercial talent and then diversify their procurement.
It's facts, rather than paranoia, I'm afraid. The modern reach, ethos and form of elite management consultancy wouldn't exist at all without McKinsey's, and its influence has been instrumental in corporate governance and public policy in the UK and the United States, and far beyond, since the turn of the 1980s. It is not a neutral technocratic instrument.
I'm afraid you asserting your opinion is a fact doesn't make it so. Some of its ex-employees have held and do hold senior corporate and political positions but that's because it employs extremely talented people who are happy to work hard for long hours - like William Hague, for example; it's not a conspiracy. It would be fair to say that operating at that level allowed them to network and build contacts with influential people at CEO level but it's secretly "controlling" anything - clients have to choose to take its advice.
Management consultancy (helping organisations improve performance) is a fairly recent profession and grew significantly in the 1980s because that was when corporations and businesses started moving away from a traditional hierarchical models just as the world got more complex in people, tax, strategy and technology, and more competitive in how it did things. It's that same evolution into more sophisticated business models that allowed GDP to rise so much at the same time. It wasn't a dark art of McKinsey that brought it all about.
Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't like to work for them. They still have an "up or out" policy, you are reviewed every six months and they work brutal hours and extensively travel. You're under constant stress. But, that said, those I know who've worked there have learnt a huge amount and found the experience very useful for their subsequent careers.
The 1980’s you say. And the period since then has been the epitome, has it not, of brilliant management in lots of private sector organisations. And of a GDP built on solid foundations ...... Or perhaps not.
Of course there have been problems, not least in the financial services industry, but world GDP (GWP) has increased from around 18tn in 1980 to around 81trn today - a four-fold increase in real terms. In England, from £15k per head in 1980 to almost £30k per head today - so we are twice as wealthy.
That doesn't mean we still have problems - including examples of poor practice, corruption, management failures and huge entitlement - but it does mean our 'new' services driven economy has delivered great improvements in the quality of life.
Two things can be true at the same time.
But these improvements are not down to the McKinsey way of management which you seemed to imply - but perhaps I misunderstood you.
If anything I think that the unnecessary complication - and the attempt to deal with that using management techniques sold at vast expense and which often seem to me to have been either the restatement of the bleeding obvious or like the Wizard of Oz devoid of content - have made things worse than they could have been. And have been one of the reasons for so many of the scandals and disasters we have seen and are still paying for.
One reason we do not have as much money as we would like is because we are still, in part, paying for the financial crisis over a decade ago, a crisis brought about by a lot of apparently very clever people trained by these apparently very clever consultants. I am afraid - and I know that this is my particular perspective - that I really don’t buy into this myth of this cleverness. There is a type of stupidity that only the very clever are capable of - and the financial world (though not just it) is full of such examples.
From my experience of "Consulting" (as customer and supplier) a common theme is that consultants are brought in by a particular executive as "allies" against others either inside or outside the organization. Could be defensive, a shoring up of a position when under attack, an attempt to maintain the status quo against those who want to stir things up, or the opposite, offensive, e.g. they want to get something done, or make some big changes, some "streamlining" maybe, reorg'd people and processes, whatever, and they need a "reputable" and "independent" report to slap down as clinching evidence for their case. If they are paying, the consultants will invariably tell them what they want to hear and deliver that report.
Very True. Most people who hire consultants already know what the answer is (or think they do), and want the consultants' report to bolster their own position. Thus the consultants' initial task is to find out what the client wants by way of recommendations, then pull out previous reports for other clients with similar recommendations and cut and paste in the new company's name. Now and again you'd find the old client's name in a report, where the cutting and pasting hadn't been so thorough.
You've clearly been there.
One from my chequered and sordid past that I think will appeal on here since it plays to Brownaphobia -
During a sojourn at one firm I became (not by choice) an "expert" at doing MC modelling using a software package called Crystal Ball. Main use for this was on PFI deals and so I did lots of them. Arrangement was, the govt dept bring us in and we have to "assess" whether the "balance of risk" in the building and maintenance over a 25 year period of an asset such as a new prison was under the terms of the PFI contract transferred from the state to the contractor. Get a "yes" to that and bingo, the deal "works" and it all goes off the public ledger. Off balance sheet financing in other words, aka cook the books.
So, it all comes down to what the model churns out, and because of the complexity of the inputs and calcs etc, this was enormously subjective and almost impossible to audit. So I would tinker around until it gave a "good" answer. Getting a "bad" answer - that the risk was not materially transferred - was unacceptable to everyone. The consulting fee (to the firm not to me) was large and was essentially for this. We were supposedly independent experts but in fact were neither. The name of the game was the name.
So Brown's off balance sheet adventures were all your fault ?
"Early voters in Texas have already exceeded the total number of people statewide who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — and the election is still 14 days away."
This is absolutely crazy, maybe time to lump on the Democrats in Texas. I wonder if the number of votes cast in Texas will top the total number of registered voters in the state.
Key question is who is voting.
In NC, yes registered Democrats are beating the Republicans handily but the under 40s have only cast 20% of early votes vs their 40% share of the electorate. Many older registered Democrats actually vote Republican now.
So how should we view NC?
The legislative efforts to restrict absentee ballots and early in person voting have been driven by the GOP, so I think we can be confident that the majority are Dem. The more subtle question is whether they are simply cannibalising their own on-the-day vote or adding voters by spreading GOTV.
"Early voters in Texas have already exceeded the total number of people statewide who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — and the election is still 14 days away."
This is absolutely crazy, maybe time to lump on the Democrats in Texas. I wonder if the number of votes cast in Texas will top the total number of registered voters in the state.
Key question is who is voting.
In NC, yes registered Democrats are beating the Republicans handily but the under 40s have only cast 20% of early votes vs their 40% share of the electorate. Many older registered Democrats actually vote Republican now.
So how should we view NC?
In comparison with 2016.
Under 40s absolute turnout is irrelevant but compared to 2016 is all important.
Rashford is doing it in the open, he's not personally benefiting and money is not changing hands in exchange for influence. In no way equivalent.
Rashford seems fine. I have no problems with his campaigning. It is an area on which he can speak with some knowledge. If he pays his taxes, I think he is perfectly entitled to say how he thinks the money should be spent.
More broadly, though, I think there is an issue of celebrity-influence. I dislike it when the celebrity is, for example, using sophisticated, or borderline illegal, tax planning to reduce their tax bill, whilst pontificating in general on how taxation is spent. Or, to give another example, there are celebrities publicly moralising on air travel or climate change. They rebuke the rest of us, while maintaining a private jet or fleets of high-performance sports cars.
I would prefer if we moved to the Swedish example, and made all income tax records completely public. It is one reason why there will never be a Swedish Donald Trump.
Also, it would prevent public grandstanding by celebrities (or politicians), whilst privately doing the opposite.
Following on from Rashford and Burnham I anticipate Sean Ryder's ideas on reform of social care to be the next Manc plan to make the government look like total arses.
The first two of those are definitely twisting Boris's melon, man.
If Marcus Rashford is so dedicated to these causes, he should give up football and stand for election
Why? Can you only be dedicated to something if you are an MP?
Because he is effectively driving Government policy without us (the voting public) having a say in the manner.
Call me quaint but, as I mentioned before, what he is doing is the equivalent of a wealthy donor using their influence to push through an agenda without proper scrutiny or the chance for people to vote on the matter.
lol wut
I know, it's quaint
Presumably all the newspapers should shut down as well.
Different. You don't have to buy a newspaper - and it's out in the open. Marcus R is literally driving Government policy through his tweets.
You are definitely trolling now.
Not at all. It is a legitimate question - how much influence should celebrities have over policy that impacts us all.
Look at my answer to Roger. If he changed the words to "cut the tax on the wealthy to 10%" and it went through, what would be the uproar and cries about disproportionate influence?
Look, I fully accept your right to think that nobody is allowed to comment on politics unless elected. You are very welcome to lead by example.
Actually, that is a bit of trolling on your part and distorting what I said. Anyone is absolutely right to campaign on whatever issues they want. What is the issue is whether anyone has the right to disproportionately use their influence to get the Government to make decisions on which all of us get impacted.
I'm assuming you stand against all corporate lobbying efforts, fund raising dinners, 'golden circle' meetings of the wealthiest donors etc. All of these are 'pay to play' and all disproportionately influence party politics when compared to a chat or letter to the well worn constituency MP.
He needs to start donating large sums to these greedy gits personally for a game of football or tennis or such like with them , they will then happily fork out for any scheme he wants.
It doesn't really matter what I think about globalization since more of it is inevitable but for the record I too welcome it. It makes "us" (the rich world) richer but at the same time poorer relative to "them" (the poor world) and that is a great thing, The problem is it widens inequalities between rich and poor in rich countries. But given rich countries are rich they ought to be able to come up with ways and means to combat this.
Where would you place China on this scale?
I'd say they are poor but making good progress in changing that.
"Early voters in Texas have already exceeded the total number of people statewide who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — and the election is still 14 days away."
This is absolutely crazy, maybe time to lump on the Democrats in Texas. I wonder if the number of votes cast in Texas will top the total number of registered voters in the state.
Key question is who is voting.
In NC, yes registered Democrats are beating the Republicans handily but the under 40s have only cast 20% of early votes vs their 40% share of the electorate. Many older registered Democrats actually vote Republican now.
The data says as much, there's a couple of areas that are worrying but most of the country is close to R=1 already.
He probably meant "it won't take much longer", or "the current measures are enough to get us there"... but clumsy to leave it at that, if the tweet is a fair representation of how he put it.
There's a related risk here, though. Too much focus on R=1 is dangerous. If R=0.95, the number of people infected will not be falling, so it'll still be burning through the population. If your main concern is with hospital capacity, R<1 is a win. But if your aim is to stop people getting sick, it should not be something that ought to get much fanfare.</p>
Yes, I agree with that. I also think that the government are fixing the wrong problem, which means we're never going to see large enough drops in the R for cases to fall by a significant number. At 0.95 it's a halving time of around 20-24 days, from 20k cases per day it would take 5 cycles to get cases below 1k per day nationally which is up to 120 days of whatever measures are necessary for R=0.95, and that's a big ask for those regions under tier 2 and 3 restrictions.
You are also assuming that an estimated R-hat of 0.95 means that the real value of R is 0.95. I'm sure the confidence intervals around those R-hat estimates are quite large, especially when reported at local level like Malmesbury has started doing.
Frankly blast freezing to ship frozen is probably the only guaranteed way to get their products past the Brexit border fiasco. Uptemper and date code at the other end. Its hardly a non-standard practice in the food industry.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Excellent comment. As someone who believes a liberal world order is a good and far better than the alternatives, I think my side screwed up by not bothering to make to make the case for multiculturalism, globalisation etc and for not reaching out to everyone to include them in the benefits of these things. We ignored them and unsurprisingly they are receptive to the snake-oil of Farage, Johnson and the New Conservative Party that intend to con them.
Thanks. It doesn't really matter what I think about globalization since more of it is inevitable but for the record I too welcome it. It makes "us" (the rich world) richer but at the same time poorer relative to "them" (the poor world) and that is a great thing, The problem is it widens inequalities between rich and poor in rich countries. But given rich countries are rich they ought to be able to come up with ways and means to combat this. I'm quite optimistic that once this current wave of "right populism" has run its course - i.e. is revealed as being in the interests of a reactionary elite - we will get onto this path. Covid helps, I think.
The problem is we are now a knowledge economy not a production economy, in the West that benefits the top 10% or so by IQ who can do professional and managerial jobs, work in IT or do high tech engineering and manufacture, it is less beneficial for the remainder some of whose fathers will have done reasonably well paid mass manufacturing jobs but are now working in relatively lower paid retail, hospitality or warehouse and delivery jobs.
For the developing world though globalisation has clearly been beneficial as much of the mass manufacturing which was not automated has now moved to them where the labour costs are cheaper, same with call centre jobs many are getting in India now
Ok. So we need to do 2 things. (i) Reduce the differential between highly paid and lowly paid jobs. (ii) Weaken the link between getting a highly paid job and your parents having money. This is how I judge every policy that a political party comes up with. Does it do 1 of these 2 things and preferably both? If it does I will support it.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Excellent comment. As someone who believes a liberal world order is a good and far better than the alternatives, I think my side screwed up by not bothering to make to make the case for multiculturalism, globalisation etc and for not reaching out to everyone to include them in the benefits of these things. We ignored them and unsurprisingly they are receptive to the snake-oil of Farage, Johnson and the New Conservative Party that intend to con them.
Thanks. It doesn't really matter what I think about globalization since more of it is inevitable but for the record I too welcome it. It makes "us" (the rich world) richer but at the same time poorer relative to "them" (the poor world) and that is a great thing, The problem is it widens inequalities between rich and poor in rich countries. But given rich countries are rich they ought to be able to come up with ways and means to combat this. I'm quite optimistic that once this current wave of "right populism" has run its course - i.e. is revealed as being in the interests of a reactionary elite - we will get onto this path. Covid helps, I think.
This is a fairish summary, but what is wrong about people who have been made poorer by globalisation voting against it?
It's easy for people who have done well out of it to say it's all been worth it whilst coining it in.
Because they should vote for redistribution of wealth domestically. That would benefit them. Brexit and Trump etc will not.
Scottish Government announce they will go to a 5 Tier system. Good sense given the 3 tier English one is not fit for purpose and impossible to work out what rules are. Hopefully some intelligent people will have been involved and have clear and concise rules.
It's the entire desperation to believe in something. "Following the science" isn't really about data, tables, graphs, and figures, despite that being what the public perceive it to be (mainly because the scientifically illiterate members of the media who are the loudest on the subject perceive it to be that).
It's about using a functioning bullshit detector so that you can't fool yourself with either wishful thinking or adhering to a favourite hypothesis (or being fooled by feeling 'ownership' of a concept and wanting to 'defend' it - or by perceiving that holding to a single position shows 'strength'*)
*Because science involves genuinely attempting to disprove hypotheses and refusing to be too attached, when someone says that 'they've always believed/known this', I tend to think, "Okay - but you COULD still be right, I guess"
When people post that they've 'researched' something online, I do wonder:
1 - Did you carry out a detailed literature search, uncover the breadth of studies indicating various possible answers, compare them for confounding factors, assess each one for what could or could not have been missed or incorrectly added and derive an outcome? or 2 - Did you look around online until you found a number or graph that said what you wanted it to say, refuse to question it in any way, and present it as gospel truth?
(Three guesses as to which of them has near-100% outcomes. And the first two don't count)
Neil is one of the Narnia believers who want for it to have been possible that if we'd ignored it, it would have all gone away - and thus Sweden MUST have had virtually no restrictions and had life go on as normal and MUST have been all but unaffected by the virus, PROVING that if we'd done the same, we'd have all been fine.
When written down like that, it's obviously all mince, and Toby Youngite True Believers will insist that's not what they mean at all, but every time they bring it up, it's with exactly that subtext.
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Excellent comment. As someone who believes a liberal world order is a good and far better than the alternatives, I think my side screwed up by not bothering to make to make the case for multiculturalism, globalisation etc and for not reaching out to everyone to include them in the benefits of these things. We ignored them and unsurprisingly they are receptive to the snake-oil of Farage, Johnson and the New Conservative Party that intend to con them.
Thanks. It doesn't really matter what I think about globalization since more of it is inevitable but for the record I too welcome it. It makes "us" (the rich world) richer but at the same time poorer relative to "them" (the poor world) and that is a great thing, The problem is it widens inequalities between rich and poor in rich countries. But given rich countries are rich they ought to be able to come up with ways and means to combat this. I'm quite optimistic that once this current wave of "right populism" has run its course - i.e. is revealed as being in the interests of a reactionary elite - we will get onto this path. Covid helps, I think.
I'm afraid it won't, if nothing is learned from it.
I am still regularly astonished by arguments from posters like @FF43 that the problem is (after all the experiences and evidence of the last 10 years) that they didn't shout loud enough about the benefits of multiculturalism and globalisation.
The reasons voters turned to Farage, Brexit and Johnson is because they were promising to do something about very high levels of immigration and the governance than enabled it, rather than just being told how good it was for them by those then in power louder and more frequently - and doling out a bit more public funding.
You have to earn the right to be heard from voters first in order to convince them, and that means seriously engaging with their cultural concerns - like, a migration cap - as well as the economic ones. They go hand in hand.
Otherwise they will quickly conclude you're not listening, and turn to alternatives.
Ok but that's what I'm saying. They'll get their Brexits and their Trumps and their lower immigration and then after a while go, "Hang on. Few less foreign types around but we're still getting screwed! How come?"
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Excellent comment. As someone who believes a liberal world order is a good and far better than the alternatives, I think my side screwed up by not bothering to make to make the case for multiculturalism, globalisation etc and for not reaching out to everyone to include them in the benefits of these things. We ignored them and unsurprisingly they are receptive to the snake-oil of Farage, Johnson and the New Conservative Party that intend to con them.
Thanks. It doesn't really matter what I think about globalization since more of it is inevitable but for the record I too welcome it. It makes "us" (the rich world) richer but at the same time poorer relative to "them" (the poor world) and that is a great thing, The problem is it widens inequalities between rich and poor in rich countries. But given rich countries are rich they ought to be able to come up with ways and means to combat this. I'm quite optimistic that once this current wave of "right populism" has run its course - i.e. is revealed as being in the interests of a reactionary elite - we will get onto this path. Covid helps, I think.
The problem is we are now a knowledge economy not a production economy, in the West that benefits the top 10% or so by IQ who can do professional and managerial jobs, work in IT or do high tech engineering and manufacture, it is less beneficial for the remainder some of whose fathers will have done reasonably well paid mass manufacturing jobs but are now working in relatively lower paid retail, hospitality or warehouse and delivery jobs.
For the developing world though globalisation has clearly been beneficial as much of the mass manufacturing which was not automated has now moved to them where the labour costs are cheaper, same with call centre jobs many are getting in India now
Ok. So we need to do 2 things. (i) Reduce the differential between highly paid and lowly paid jobs. (ii) Weaken the link between getting a highly paid job and your parents having money. This is how I judge every policy that a political party comes up with. Does it do 1 of these 2 things and preferably both? If it does I will support it.
i) We already have a minimum wage, otherwise the best the government can do is ensure most own a property and build up some assets. ii) The link is based on iq which is largely inherited and little the government can do about it
Following on from Rashford and Burnham I anticipate Sean Ryder's ideas on reform of social care to be the next Manc plan to make the government look like total arses.
The first two of those are definitely twisting Boris's melon, man.
If Marcus Rashford is so dedicated to these causes, he should give up football and stand for election
Why? Can you only be dedicated to something if you are an MP?
Because he is effectively driving Government policy without us (the voting public) having a say in the manner.
Call me quaint but, as I mentioned before, what he is doing is the equivalent of a wealthy donor using their influence to push through an agenda without proper scrutiny or the chance for people to vote on the matter.
lol wut
I know, it's quaint
Presumably all the newspapers should shut down as well.
Different. You don't have to buy a newspaper - and it's out in the open. Marcus R is literally driving Government policy through his tweets.
What is it that first annoyed you about black footballer Rashford?
Stocky: Largely white Brits I take it, rather than migrant workers?
Probably so, but not necessarily. I`d like to hear more from @theProle on this.
Agree it was great insight into a demographic that 75% of PB contributors have no association with on that level.
It's interesting how this kind of breathless reportage from the building sites of Britain is dissected with such anthropological excitement on PB. I mean, are these people really so unknown to people here? I move in pretty bourgeois circles these days, perhaps even the global elite, but I went to a comprehensive school and have done a fair amount of low paid work in the past, and the fact that a lot of working class blokes don't like the EU, or anything vaguely foreign, or indeed have a low opinion of "political correctness gone mad" is hardly news to me.
Maybe it isn't but recognising those people and their views isn't the same as engaging with or addressing them.
It isn't an answer to say it's not news, you know them well, shrug your shoulders, just say they're wrong and move on.
It depends who you are. I am just a private citizen and it's not my job to educate and enlighten the masses, nor am I arrogant enough to think that I could. Live and let live is an entirely rational response to the fact that some people hold views that I disagree with. If I were a politician of course I would have to engage with them and find a way to bring some of them on board, without selling out my core beliefs or alienating other supporters. As the original poster notes, there are left wing economic messages that might resonate with them. Of course it is in the interests of the Tory party and press to play up the right wing cultural messages precisely because they don't want to engage with those economic views (hence create wedge issues like Brexit, statues etc). I just find it odd that these people seem to induce an almost anthropological fascination from some people here, as if they are an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. It makes me think that some people must have had quite a sheltered upbringing. It's also a bit reminiscent of the episode of Peep Show when Jeremy tries to be friends with their builder, or perhaps the Greek art student in Pulp's Common People.
You're onto something here.
"The Night They Drove Coal Dixie Down (but we kept on singing!): The romanticisation of the miners' strike and the working class generally by the British middle class Left."
This is a book I've always wanted to write if I could do more than titles.
But now it's the Right doing it and it's in a far more pernicious fashion. Because what they at the same time caricature and celebrate is not the collectivist solidarity and sense of community of these salt-of-the-earths but the rather unevolved - or in PC speak "traditional" - social values and attitudes that some of them have.
I hate it - and I hate even more that in recent times it's working. June 23rd. Dec 12th. I won't add "etc" since I hope the tide is going out on all this crap, starting with Nov 3rd.
Excellent comment. As someone who believes a liberal world order is a good and far better than the alternatives, I think my side screwed up by not bothering to make to make the case for multiculturalism, globalisation etc and for not reaching out to everyone to include them in the benefits of these things. We ignored them and unsurprisingly they are receptive to the snake-oil of Farage, Johnson and the New Conservative Party that intend to con them.
Thanks. It doesn't really matter what I think about globalization since more of it is inevitable but for the record I too welcome it. It makes "us" (the rich world) richer but at the same time poorer relative to "them" (the poor world) and that is a great thing, The problem is it widens inequalities between rich and poor in rich countries. But given rich countries are rich they ought to be able to come up with ways and means to combat this. I'm quite optimistic that once this current wave of "right populism" has run its course - i.e. is revealed as being in the interests of a reactionary elite - we will get onto this path. Covid helps, I think.
The problem is we are now a knowledge economy not a production economy, in the West that benefits the top 10% or so by IQ who can do professional and managerial jobs, work in IT or do high tech engineering and manufacture, it is less beneficial for the remainder some of whose fathers will have done reasonably well paid mass manufacturing jobs but are now working in relatively lower paid retail, hospitality or warehouse and delivery jobs.
For the developing world though globalisation has clearly been beneficial as much of the mass manufacturing which was not automated has now moved to them where the labour costs are cheaper, same with call centre jobs many are getting in India now
Ok. So we need to do 2 things. (i) Reduce the differential between highly paid and lowly paid jobs. (ii) Weaken the link between getting a highly paid job and your parents having money. This is how I judge every policy that a political party comes up with. Does it do 1 of these 2 things and preferably both? If it does I will support it.
i) We already have a minimum wage, otherwise the best the government can do is ensure most own a property and build up some assets. ii) The link is based on iq which is largely inherited and little the government can do about it
i) they need a minimum living wage ii) they need to get rid of nepotism and cronyism it has F all to do with iq. You only need to look at the bunch of low iq thick knuckle draggers running the country to realise it is not iq that gets them there it is nepotism and cronyism.
Comments
Brown got paid over £1m in 2013 alone, and has a media estimated net worth of $15m.
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/gordon-brown-net-worth/
In NC, yes registered Democrats are beating the Republicans handily but the under 40s have only cast 20% of early votes vs their 40% share of the electorate. Many older registered Democrats actually vote Republican now.
So how should we view NC?
Under 40s absolute turnout is irrelevant but compared to 2016 is all important.
More broadly, though, I think there is an issue of celebrity-influence. I dislike it when the celebrity is, for example, using sophisticated, or borderline illegal, tax planning to reduce their tax bill, whilst pontificating in general on how taxation is spent. Or, to give another example, there are celebrities publicly moralising on air travel or climate change. They rebuke the rest of us, while maintaining a private jet or fleets of high-performance sports cars.
I would prefer if we moved to the Swedish example, and made all income tax records completely public. It is one reason why there will never be a Swedish Donald Trump.
Also, it would prevent public grandstanding by celebrities (or politicians), whilst privately doing the opposite.
"Following the science" isn't really about data, tables, graphs, and figures, despite that being what the public perceive it to be (mainly because the scientifically illiterate members of the media who are the loudest on the subject perceive it to be that).
It's about using a functioning bullshit detector so that you can't fool yourself with either wishful thinking or adhering to a favourite hypothesis (or being fooled by feeling 'ownership' of a concept and wanting to 'defend' it - or by perceiving that holding to a single position shows 'strength'*)
*Because science involves genuinely attempting to disprove hypotheses and refusing to be too attached, when someone says that 'they've always believed/known this', I tend to think, "Okay - but you COULD still be right, I guess"
When people post that they've 'researched' something online, I do wonder:
1 - Did you carry out a detailed literature search, uncover the breadth of studies indicating various possible answers, compare them for confounding factors, assess each one for what could or could not have been missed or incorrectly added and derive an outcome?
or
2 - Did you look around online until you found a number or graph that said what you wanted it to say, refuse to question it in any way, and present it as gospel truth?
(Three guesses as to which of them has near-100% outcomes. And the first two don't count)
Neil is one of the Narnia believers who want for it to have been possible that if we'd ignored it, it would have all gone away - and thus Sweden MUST have had virtually no restrictions and had life go on as normal and MUST have been all but unaffected by the virus, PROVING that if we'd done the same, we'd have all been fine.
When written down like that, it's obviously all mince, and Toby Youngite True Believers will insist that's not what they mean at all, but every time they bring it up, it's with exactly that subtext.
Then they will focus on the REAL problem.
ii) The link is based on iq which is largely inherited and little the government can do about it
ii) they need to get rid of nepotism and cronyism it has F all to do with iq. You only need to look at the bunch of low iq thick knuckle draggers running the country to realise it is not iq that gets them there it is nepotism and cronyism.