The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms introducing the NHS internal market.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Crikey you as bad as I am. Despite me being disparaging of floating voters, I have somehow managed to vote Con, Lab, LibDem and Green in various GEs.
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
Your obsession with GPT3, I wish I hadn't mentioned it. It actually won't do what you say, as it can't, its a one trick pony.
Actually no to interpreters....all these AI have been shown not to actually fully understand context.
GPT3 also isnt the answer to most of the jobs you list. But other AI tools certainly are / will be along.
As I said previously, they won't fully.replace these jobs they will aid in them. That may in the case of things like medicine mean we can treat more people, other industries, yes you might not need your creative design agency to have as many people doing whatever they charge crazy money for.
No, GPT3 or her successors - as I specifically said - will replace these jobs.
It creates advertising copy, instantly (and much much else)
SO I typed in two sentences, summarising a book a friend of mine is writing - about a woman trapped on an island by her fear of water, after her sister drowns in the same water. That's it. That's all I said. I asked for Facebook ads for this novel
Within 30 seconds GPT3 gave me five examples, including this:
"Fear of water? Sounds like the premise of a scary movie, but for Lily Stewart, it’s her reality. Three months after her sister drowned in the same water, Lily still hasn’t taken a swim. She’s trapped on an island filled with memories. She’s determined to overcome her fear and end the pain. Will she do it before it’s too late?"
and this
"Check out the latest thriller from James Rollins, a New York Times bestselling author. When her sister drowns during a family vacation on an idyllic island off the coast of Maine, Helen Travis plunges into a psychological tailspin, haunted by the specter of her sibling and unable to face returning to the site of the tragedy. But when Helen learns that her death might not have been an accident, she returns. She's lured back by the possibility that supernatural forces - including dark magic once practiced by members of an isolated local tribe - might be at work in the drowning death of her sister."
Absolutely verbatim. I haven't changed a word. A copywriter might spend an hour or two, or more, producing these example.
30 seconds. You might want to tweak the second, the first is word perfect
It made up believable names, it guessed a plot twist, it is incredible. And it only gets better. It learns.
On topic SKS has a problem with an extraordinarily poor front bench but he needs to make the best of what he has. By far the best thinker currently available to Labour is Ed Miliband. It is astonishing how much of his agenda has become the accepted norm and been introduced by Tory governments. He may not be particularly clever at implementing policy but he clearly has ideas and is capable of coherent thought.
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
A number of points - yes, we have a CINO Government. Indeed, had that Budget been delivered by Gordon Brown or by an LD or further back an Alliance CoE, I wouldn't have been surprised. That's the one comfort if you aren't a Conservative - you've a Government that does all the things you want AND you can vote against it.
Hiking Corporation Tax, plenty of public spending - what's not to like?
To be fair, if someone came down my street with a political leaflet and dishing out wheelbarrows full of £20 notes, I'd probably read the leaflet and leave Mrs Stodge to count the money.
I do agree the successful leader utilises all the experience and talent at his or her command. Both Blair and Cameron understood this but at the same time there's no substitute for experience on the frontbench and those sitting on the Opposition frontbench should have the opportunity to learn and develop - I don't think Anneliese Dodds has done a bad job in opposition to Sunak under the circumstances but she will need to not only highlight the inconsistencies in Sunak's plans but offer a viable alternative.
The other aspect is populism - you have currently a populist Government which is desperate to be liked. There will inevitably come a point when that is no longer the case and once populists cease being popular, they are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Sometimes in politics you have to do unpopular things but which are the right things - Thatcher understood that, I don't think Johnson does.
The point about internal discipline is another aspect - it's easy to be disciplined when you are doing well. It will be the first thing that suffers when this Government hits its trough.
I agree with nearly all of that but your last paragraph is wildly optimistic from the government's point of view. Tory unity died in the Brexit wars and shows no sign at all of having revived. Just look at the number of life time Tories on this board who reach for hyperbole or even tweets to show their disdain for this government on a daily basis.
It is a deeply fractured camp but Labour are so far not exploiting this.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms introducing the NHS internal market.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Crikey you as bad as I am. Despite me being disparaging of floating voters, I have somehow managed to vote Con, Lab, LibDem and Green in various GEs.
I have done all of those plus SDP!
I wish SDP or Liberal Party produced candidates in my constituency. I`d vote for either. (I don`t mean just to add to my tally!)
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
Long term, it's fine. Once things that are needful are done by AI, then their cost falls off a cliff. But humans will still do stuff for the joy of doing it. People don't keep or ride horses for functional reasons any more, but they do it anyway. We don't need political commentators; there are dozens of people here who produce stuff better thought-out than the average Fleet Street hack every day. We don't need thriller writers (there are more books in print than anyone could read in a lifetime) but people will continue to create, because of the human impulse to do so. We don't need cottage gardens for food and survival, but we tend them because it soothes our souls.
It will be a mess to get there (basically, at some point UBI becomes essential) and the breaking of the ladders will hurt some more than others. But the Luddites are always wrong, overall. Strap in and enjoy the ride.
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
Your obsession with GPT3, I wish I hadn't mentioned it. It actually won't do what you say, as it can't, its a one trick pony.
Actually no to interpreters....all these AI have been shown not to actually fully understand context.
GPT3 also isnt the answer to most of the jobs you list. But other AI tools certainly are / will be along.
As I said previously, they won't fully.replace these jobs they will aid in them. That may in the case of things like medicine mean we can treat more people, other industries, yes you might not need your creative design agency to have as many people doing whatever they charge crazy money for.
No, GPT3 or her successors - as I specifically said - will replace these jobs.
It creates advertising copy, instantly (and much much else)
SO I typed in two sentences, summarising a book a friend of mine is writing - about a woman trapped on an island by her fear of water, after her sister drowns in the same water. That's it. That's all I said. I asked for Facebook ads for this novel
Within 30 seconds GPT3 gave me five examples, including this:
"Fear of water? Sounds like the premise of a scary movie, but for Lily Stewart, it’s her reality. Three months after her sister drowned in the same water, Lily still hasn’t taken a swim. She’s trapped on an island filled with memories. She’s determined to overcome her fear and end the pain. Will she do it before it’s too late?"
and this
"Check out the latest thriller from James Rollins, a New York Times bestselling author. When her sister drowns during a family vacation on an idyllic island off the coast of Maine, Helen Travis plunges into a psychological tailspin, haunted by the specter of her sibling and unable to face returning to the site of the tragedy. But when Helen learns that her death might not have been an accident, she returns. She's lured back by the possibility that supernatural forces - including dark magic once practiced by members of an isolated local tribe - might be at work in the drowning death of her sister."
Absolutely verbatim. I haven't changed a word. A copywriter might spend an hour or two, or more, producing these example.
30 seconds. You might want to tweak the second, the first is word perfect
It made up believable names, it guessed a plot twist, it is incredible. And it only gets better. It learns.
GPT3 can produce reasonable short amount of prose....it can't produce coherent prose, it doesn't actually understand what it is creating. It can't write a book as it doesn't have any concept of plot. The reason you only get a few paragraphs out is because it goes to shit after that, spouting stuff that doesn't logically follow what came before.
Is it impressive yes. Is it potential useful for idea generation yes. Is going to put the whole creative industry out of a job, no.
A big thing all language AI have been found unable to conquer is the implied unwritten, especially ambigious....and that is what a lot of for instance comedy is based on e.g fork 'andles / four candles sketch.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I could actually support Labour if it was like what you aspire to.
Number one made me chuckle - it is both so bloody true and obvious and something I can't see changing
People who don't agree with Labour are bigots, racist and scum in the eyes of too many
See, that last line of yours, are you sure that's not you just repeating a trope from the Leave/Remain propaganda wars rather than a true & fair charge against the Labour Party?
For example, on here, there are tons of Tory posters who trot that out. Yet no Labour supporting PBer apart from myself and Roger ever writes anything along those lines, and most of that is in jest.
I'm very sure
Exhibit one would be ‘never kissed a Tory’ meme for the left. Always give the impression that tori’s are evil, and are out to make the poor’s lives worse, and grind them into the dirt, usually just because they enjoy it. Rarely is it accepted that people have different views on how to get a fairer society.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
That gets to the heart of the matter.
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
But right now, that's not where we are. The choice is Johnson or Starmer. It's a flawed choice, sure, though less so than it was last December. Either this government with no brain and no conscience is worth removing, or it isn't. And that means backing the opposition (even if you think it's meh) or waiting until 2029.
Your choice, Proper Lefties.
Fine post. I've just seen Ruth Davidson call for Nicola Sturgeon's resignation. Sturgeon replied 'In ten weeks I am putting myself forward for election to the Scottish Parliament and allowing the Scottish people to get rid of me if they want to. Why don't you do the same instead of going to Westminster to and taking a seat from Boris Johnson in the House of Lords?'.
........and she was once everyone's favourite Tory
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
Surely having 7 words for "the" was a NTB that an EU that was serious about having a genuine SM would have looked to address.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms introducing the NHS internal market.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Crikey you as bad as I am. Despite me being disparaging of floating voters, I have somehow managed to vote Con, Lab, LibDem and Green in various GEs.
What is wrong with floating voters? Without us we couldn’t have democracy.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
I bought a bottle of Benromach originally as that is the village that my Scots ancestors came from. I have rather taken to it since, particularly the 15 year old.
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
Your obsession with GPT3, I wish I hadn't mentioned it. It actually won't do what you say, as it can't, its a one trick pony.
Actually no to interpreters....all these AI have been shown not to actually fully understand context.
GPT3 also isnt the answer to most of the jobs you list. But other AI tools certainly are / will be along.
As I said previously, they won't fully.replace these jobs they will aid in them. That may in the case of things like medicine mean we can treat more people, other industries, yes you might not need your creative design agency to have as many people doing whatever they charge crazy money for.
No, GPT3 or her successors - as I specifically said - will replace these jobs.
It creates advertising copy, instantly (and much much else)
SO I typed in two sentences, summarising a book a friend of mine is writing - about a woman trapped on an island by her fear of water, after her sister drowns in the same water. That's it. That's all I said. I asked for Facebook ads for this novel
Within 30 seconds GPT3 gave me five examples, including this:
"Fear of water? Sounds like the premise of a scary movie, but for Lily Stewart, it’s her reality. Three months after her sister drowned in the same water, Lily still hasn’t taken a swim. She’s trapped on an island filled with memories. She’s determined to overcome her fear and end the pain. Will she do it before it’s too late?"
and this
"Check out the latest thriller from James Rollins, a New York Times bestselling author. When her sister drowns during a family vacation on an idyllic island off the coast of Maine, Helen Travis plunges into a psychological tailspin, haunted by the specter of her sibling and unable to face returning to the site of the tragedy. But when Helen learns that her death might not have been an accident, she returns. She's lured back by the possibility that supernatural forces - including dark magic once practiced by members of an isolated local tribe - might be at work in the drowning death of her sister."
Absolutely verbatim. I haven't changed a word. A copywriter might spend an hour or two, or more, producing these example.
30 seconds. You might want to tweak the second, the first is word perfect
It made up believable names, it guessed a plot twist, it is incredible. And it only gets better. It learns.
GPT3 can produce reasonable short amount of prose....it can't produce coherent prose, it doesn't actually understand what it is creating. It can't write a book as it doesn't have any concept of plot. The reason you only get a few paragraphs out is because it goes to shit after that, spouting stuff that doesn't logically.follow what came before.
It doesn't HAVE to "understand" in a human way. It just does it.
And it absolutely DOES get plot: that's why it is so good at plotting, and already being used by writers. It has been fed every book on the internet. It has learned
It figured out the plot of an entire mystery book, without being prompted. Why? How? Because all good plots follow a limited sequence of patterns. Once you master those patterns, and understand why they work (and others don't) you can plot. But it's never easy, for humans. A mega brained computer can just crunch the algos, and bingo
I love this exchange further down that reddit.
Apparently, GPT3 is like a smart girl embarrassed by her own intelligence, and just wants to be normal
"I told the AI to simulate a supersmart version of itself (this works, for some reason)"
"I love how these AI models respond to lines like these. These models obviously have the information and connection-making ability to come to the correct answer, but all it cares about is appearing normal, indistinguishable from the training data, and normal people get questions wrong, so instead of drawing on those patterns it'll instead figure out wrong answers that look normal...
."..but if you tell it that it's pretending to be smart, then all of a sudden it realizes that it's normal for smart people to get the right answer, and it actually answers you correctly."
"It understands stories better than we do, enough to deduce its way through a mystery nobody's been able to crack, but it doesn't care about being right until you tell it that it's pretending to be the sort of person who gets the answer right. It's like it's got social anxiety about looking out of place until you give it some encouragement."
"So AI suffers from the Smart Girl problem."
"AI simulating social anxiety is a gigantic fucking mood."
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms introducing the NHS internal market.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Crikey you as bad as I am. Despite me being disparaging of floating voters, I have somehow managed to vote Con, Lab, LibDem and Green in various GEs.
What is wrong with floating voters? Without us we couldn’t have democracy.
Ah but have any of you delivered leaflets for two different parties at the same GE ?
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
< I agree with nearly all of that but your last paragraph is wildly optimistic from the government's point of view. Tory unity died in the Brexit wars and shows no sign at all of having revived. Just look at the number of life time Tories on this board who reach for hyperbole or even tweets to show their disdain for this government on a daily basis.
It is a deeply fractured camp but Labour are so far not exploiting this.
I well remember how quiet the usual Labour trouble-makers became in the mid-90s after it became obvious Blair was taking them back to power. The likes of Jeremy Corbyn acquiesced as Blair changed the Party underneath them but he was going to win.
The problem for Johnson will be what backbenchers start to say when their majorities come under threat. Thatcher fell because her MPs recognised with her as leader they were going to lose their seats but with a Heseltine or Major they might keep them. Johnson might have the same problem and he has Rishi Sunak as a ready-made (and I suspect) popular alternative. The one poll Johnson won't want is the one showing the Party 10 points behind Labour with him as leader and 5 point ahead with Sunak as leader.
Johnson's only option is to link Sunak directly to the economic impact of Covid - as I've said on here before, the tension between 10 and 11 Downing Street has weakened many British Governments irrespective of whether the CoE is a potential political rival.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
Yes, and Milburn reforms introducing the NHS internal market.
2001 was the last time I voted Labour, 2010 Conservative.
Crikey you as bad as I am. Despite me being disparaging of floating voters, I have somehow managed to vote Con, Lab, LibDem and Green in various GEs.
What is wrong with floating voters? Without us we couldn’t have democracy.
Ah but have any of you delivered leaflets for two different parties at the same GE ?
My brother in law did that for every election from 1992 to 2005.
Then he went full time self employed and gave up his postal round.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I'm not overly fond of peatiness myself. I am rather partial to the Caithness and Sutherland and Orkney ones, on the Jurassic and Old Red Sandstone rather than Precambrian and metamorphics. Clynelish, Old Pulteney, Highland Park. Might be worth looking into.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Sadly while I enjoy a good whisky I abdjure it. One of those drinks that has a very adverse effect on me and turns me from my normal mellow self to physically aggressive
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about it tbh. What’s the argument today for Scotland, for example. Join the EU and access fewer vaccines and reimpose tariffs on scotch with America?
On topic SKS has a problem with an extraordinarily poor front bench but he needs to make the best of what he has. By far the best thinker currently available to Labour is Ed Miliband. It is astonishing how much of his agenda has become the accepted norm and been introduced by Tory governments. He may not be particularly clever at implementing policy but he clearly has ideas and is capable of coherent thought.
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
The only thing worse than a speech with no jokes is a speech full of jokes from someone who can't deliver them.
Has anyone seen SKS deliver a great gag yet? I mean, he's had the job a year and there's been plenty of that wasn't exactly a laugh a minute. But even so - there's trying to do gravitas and then there's po-faced humourless guy.
Boris has no issues about making a joke. Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it in questionable taste?Who cares. Does it get a laugh? Does it poke fun? That is the question to ask.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Sadly while I enjoy a good whisky I abdjure it. One of those drinks that has a very adverse effect on me and turns me from my normal mellow self to physically aggressive
Well, I never drink in the week.
But I am fortunate that when I am mildly intoxicated, I become (even more) amiable and placid and tend to peacefully nod off.
I am told my jokes get even filthier when I am really well lit, but that hasn’t happened more than three times and not for 15 years, so it may have changed.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
I agree with the one proviso that they haven't yet shown themselves to be corrupt unlike their Tory opponents.
Poverty fund for Richmond in Yorkshire?
That gets to the heart of the matter.
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
But right now, that's not where we are. The choice is Johnson or Starmer. It's a flawed choice, sure, though less so than it was last December. Either this government with no brain and no conscience is worth removing, or it isn't. And that means backing the opposition (even if you think it's meh) or waiting until 2029.
Your choice, Proper Lefties.
Look, I'm a One Nation Tory In Exile. I'm champing for the day that I can join in the pileon on how boring SKS is and how rubbish Lefties are in general.
Genuine LOL there! Prodigals are welcome back at any time, and the Proper Lefties will only tell you to fuck off and join the Tories anyway...
You're probably right. Which is the mess that the Labour party is in.
But if you consider the arrogance and sleaze of the current government, there are roughly three responses.
One is to exult in it. One is to shake one's head sadly, and regret that it's necessary to keep the other lot out. The third is to conclude that, if the price of being on the winning side is to tolerate this, maybe you don't want to be on the winning side.
On topic SKS has a problem with an extraordinarily poor front bench but he needs to make the best of what he has. By far the best thinker currently available to Labour is Ed Miliband. It is astonishing how much of his agenda has become the accepted norm and been introduced by Tory governments. He may not be particularly clever at implementing policy but he clearly has ideas and is capable of coherent thought.
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
The only thing worse than a speech with no jokes is a speech full of jokes from someone who can't deliver them.
Has anyone seen SKS deliver a great gag yet? I mean, he's had the job a year and there's been plenty of that wasn't exactly a laugh a minute. But even so - there's trying to do gravitas and then there's po-faced humourless guy.
Boris has no issues about making a joke. Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it in questionable taste?Who cares. Does it get a laugh? Does it poke fun? That is the question to ask.
People who can’t deliver jokes - ugh. Thatcher. Her attempt at the dead parrot was awful.
She also infamously tried to rewrite a gag at Callaghan’s expense (Callaghan having compared himself to Moses) from ‘keep taking the tablets’ to ‘keep taking the pills.’
< I agree with nearly all of that but your last paragraph is wildly optimistic from the government's point of view. Tory unity died in the Brexit wars and shows no sign at all of having revived. Just look at the number of life time Tories on this board who reach for hyperbole or even tweets to show their disdain for this government on a daily basis.
It is a deeply fractured camp but Labour are so far not exploiting this.
I well remember how quiet the usual Labour trouble-makers became in the mid-90s after it became obvious Blair was taking them back to power. The likes of Jeremy Corbyn acquiesced as Blair changed the Party underneath them but he was going to win.
The problem for Johnson will be what backbenchers start to say when their majorities come under threat. Thatcher fell because her MPs recognised with her as leader they were going to lose their seats but with a Heseltine or Major they might keep them. Johnson might have the same problem and he has Rishi Sunak as a ready-made (and I suspect) popular alternative. The one poll Johnson won't want is the one showing the Party 10 points behind Labour with him as leader and 5 point ahead with Sunak as leader.
Johnson's only option is to link Sunak directly to the economic impact of Covid - as I've said on here before, the tension between 10 and 11 Downing Street has weakened many British Governments irrespective of whether the CoE is a potential political rival.
The only exception to that rule I can recall in my adult lifetime was the Coalition/Cameron government where PM and Chancellor were genuinely hand in glove throughout. Thatcher got on well with Howe and Lawson for periods but it never lasted. Blair and Brown, well... In the case of Hammond and May it was really hard to say who was sabotaging the other but they never seemed to work together. Boris has already fallen out with one reasonably competent Chancellor. It would be remarkable if he and Rishi went the distance.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Sadly while I enjoy a good whisky I abdjure it. One of those drinks that has a very adverse effect on me and turns me from my normal mellow self to physically aggressive
Well, I never drink in the week.
But I am fortunate that when I am mildly intoxicated, I become (even more) amiable and placid and tend to peacefully nod off.
I am told my jokes get even filthier when I am really well lit, but that hasn’t happened more than three times and not for 15 years, so it may have changed.
I never have more than one drink a day, however sometimes it comes in many glasses. But yes I am normally amiable and placid when drinking except if I drink whisky or tequila in the latter case it acts as an amnesia drug where I just dont remember a thing after the shot.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Aardbeg Corry is on price drop at £58 atm and for £60 the Glengoyne timecapsule gets you a 20cl 12yr a 20cl 18 yr and a 20cl legacy
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
I bought a bottle of Benromach originally as that is the village that my Scots ancestors came from. I have rather taken to it since, particularly the 15 year old.
To be honest I would never have come across Bunnahabhain unless I had been to a Whisky shop whilst on a weekend in London. Hence the crowdsourcing new ideas! My ancestors are Welsh so perhaps I need to try Penderyn.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
Benromach is good. Arran 10 lovely, you can't go wrong with Balvenie - they do a peated edition 'peat-week' that is a very well made peated whisky. If you like lightly peated, and can stretch your budget slightly, there's a Glenlivet Nadurra peated edition - it's not made using peated barley, it's matured in a whisky cask that previously held peated whisky, so it's just a smoky cigarry hint that is more on the palate than the nose - it's *delicious*. Glendronach is very popular because of the sherry maturation - personally I find it slightly eggy somehow, and have never got on with it for that reason. Others you should look out for Craigellachie - a robust Speyside, Aberfeldy 12 - good value and a nice introduction to the category. Also don't neglect blended Scotch, there are some amazing ones by the likes of Compass Box.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
I bought a bottle of Benromach originally as that is the village that my Scots ancestors came from. I have rather taken to it since, particularly the 15 year old.
To be honest I would never have come across Bunnahabhain unless I had been to a Whisky shop whilst on a weekend in London. Hence the crowdsourcing new ideas! My ancestors are Welsh so perhaps I need to try Penderyn.
Leon, rather than reading crap on reddit I actually read the academic papers...e.g.this is OpenAI themselves,
GPT-3 samples [can] lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs."
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
Benromach is good. Arran 10 lovely, you can't go wrong with Balvenie - they do a peated edition 'peat-week' that is a very well made peated whisky. If you like lightly peated, and can stretch your budget slightly, there's a Glenlivet Nadurra peated edition - it's not made using peated barley, it's matured in a whisky that previously held peated whisky, so it's just a smoky cigarry hint that is more on the palate than the nose - it's *delicious*. Glendronach is very popular because of the sherry maturation - personally I find it slightly eggy somehow, and have never got on with it for that reason. Others you should look out for Craigellachie - a robust Speyside, Aberfeldy 12 - good value and a nice introduction to the category. Also don't neglect blended Scotch, there are some amazing ones by the likes of Compass Box.
There used to be an annual rumfest at olympia where manufacturers would give away free samples. I think something like 450 stalls maybe something similar for whisky? ah yes https://www.whiskyfest.co.uk/
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Aardbeg Corry is on price drop at £58 atm and for £60 the Glengoyne timecapsule gets you a 20cl 12yr a 20cl 18 yr and a 20cl legacy
On topic SKS has a problem with an extraordinarily poor front bench but he needs to make the best of what he has. By far the best thinker currently available to Labour is Ed Miliband. It is astonishing how much of his agenda has become the accepted norm and been introduced by Tory governments. He may not be particularly clever at implementing policy but he clearly has ideas and is capable of coherent thought.
He's also had his time as leader so he is not a direct threat but that is an incidental matter.
If I was SKS I would bring him into the centre of policy making. I would make him shadow Chancellor and ask him to think about how we are going to get out of this mess without years and years of austerity. I would ask that every other shadow put ideas through him so that they are integrated into a credible alternative strategy without making lots of ridiculous promises (and I mean even more ridiculous than Boris/Rishi's, which is going some) that lose credibility. I would look to apply some of the old New Labour party and message disciplining.
And I would find a decent speechwriter from somewhere, ideally one with a sense of humour.
The only thing worse than a speech with no jokes is a speech full of jokes from someone who can't deliver them.
Has anyone seen SKS deliver a great gag yet? I mean, he's had the job a year and there's been plenty of that wasn't exactly a laugh a minute. But even so - there's trying to do gravitas and then there's po-faced humourless guy.
Boris has no issues about making a joke. Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it in questionable taste?Who cares. Does it get a laugh? Does it poke fun? That is the question to ask.
Politics for good or ill has become a branch of the entertainment business. We want to be entertained and a memorable joke is a brilliant way to get a message across. SKS doesn't seem to have a sense of humour. Can you imagine him doing the Love Actually PPB? Not a chance. It's a definite weakness. And a large part of Boris's strength.
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about it tbh. What’s the argument today for Scotland, for example. Join the EU and access fewer vaccines and reimpose tariffs on scotch with America?
Hmm.
Scotland is hopelessly, irretrievably divided between Nationalists and Unionists, and the constitution will dominate and wreck everything until the argument is rendered moot by secession. Most Scots regard themselves as 'Scottish not British' and that will never change. The Union is already dead in spirit if not in body - Scotland would vote for secession like a shot if middle income, middle of the road voters didn't think that independence would hit them in their wallets and pension funds. England votes for Tories and most Scots hate Tories. A sizeable minority of Scots just hate the English full stop. Scotland is one-tenth the size of England and will always complain about being dragged to places it doesn't want to go by its vastly larger partner. There's also nothing left to gain from perpetuating an ever-weaker Union in which, at a minimum, 45% of the population is desperate to get away, regardless of how much money and autonomy is thrown at it.
The element in Scotland that wishes to be independent will keep pushing for it ad infinitum until they get what they want. They'll worry about what to do with independence afterwards.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Aardbeg Corry is on price drop at £58 atm and for £60 the Glengoyne timecapsule gets you a 20cl 12yr a 20cl 18 yr and a 20cl legacy
YES - forgot Glengoyne - lovely stuff.
Went to the Glengoyne distillery while up there, become a real fan since, I don't normally go for the sherry casked malts. On a budget the 12yr old is very refreshing and the Teapot dram blows your socks off!
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
I bought a bottle of Benromach originally as that is the village that my Scots ancestors came from. I have rather taken to it since, particularly the 15 year old.
To be honest I would never have come across Bunnahabhain unless I had been to a Whisky shop whilst on a weekend in London. Hence the crowdsourcing new ideas! My ancestors are Welsh so perhaps I need to try Penderyn.
I bought a bottle of Bunnahabhain once, for the worst possible reason. It was the only bottle in the whisky section short enough to fit on a shelf. It didn't last on the shelf though!
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about it tbh. What’s the argument today for Scotland, for example. Join the EU and access fewer vaccines and reimpose tariffs on scotch with America?
Hmm.
Scotland is hopelessly, irretrievably divided between Nationalists and Unionists, and the constitution will dominate and wreck everything until the argument is rendered moot by secession. Most Scots regard themselves as 'Scottish not British' and that will never change. The Union is already dead in spirit if not in body - Scotland would vote for secession like a shot if middle income, middle of the road voters didn't think that independence would hit them in their wallets and pension funds. England votes for Tories and most Scots hate Tories. A sizeable minority of Scots just hate the English full stop. Scotland is one-tenth the size of England and will always complain about being dragged to places it doesn't want to go by its vastly larger partner. There's also nothing left to gain from perpetuating an ever-weaker Union in which, at a minimum, 45% of the population is desperate to get away, regardless of how much money and autonomy is thrown at it.
The element in Scotland that wishes to be independent will keep pushing for it ad infinitum until they get what they want. They'll worry about what to do with independence afterwards.
Simple solution abolish the uk and we can bring wales , scotland and england into the cornish empire....nods
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I prefer Glen Moray Classic, which isn’t pricy.
I had forgotten about this whiskey. I got a bottle as a gift for Christmas a few years ago and I seem to remember it was very easy to drink!!!
I drink exactly one glass of whisky every week. On Friday evening, to let myself know that I’ve done for the week and can relax.
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
Despite having worked in the pub industry for a number of years I never drank that much at home due to fairly frequent work related (and paid for) nights out. After being made redundant in October and particularly after getting a new job in the civil service in December I have been drinking down my stocks. As I start my new job in a few weeks I will have to go to once or twice a week.
My biggest disappointment has been that having nursed some bottles for a while I have had two broken corks from bottles I had not drink quickly. A Glenfiddich was not a problem but a bottle of Aberlour A'bunadh (now £90ish) which Ive had for about 10 years was really frustrating!
Interesting header. I usually enjoy your posts and more often than not agree with them. Tonight you've let your slip show. You are clearly a Leaver and the only Leaver's cliche you haven't used is 'Metropolitan Elite'
I received the Astra-Zenecca jab today. Very impressed with the organisation and efficiency apparent. After 6 hours I have yet to suffer any obvious side effects.
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about it tbh. What’s the argument today for Scotland, for example. Join the EU and access fewer vaccines and reimpose tariffs on scotch with America?
Hmm.
Scotland is hopelessly, irretrievably divided between Nationalists and Unionists, and the constitution will dominate and wreck everything until the argument is rendered moot by secession. Most Scots regard themselves as 'Scottish not British' and that will never change. The Union is already dead in spirit if not in body - Scotland would vote for secession like a shot if middle income, middle of the road voters didn't think that independence would hit them in their wallets and pension funds. England votes for Tories and most Scots hate Tories. A sizeable minority of Scots just hate the English full stop. Scotland is one-tenth the size of England and will always complain about being dragged to places it doesn't want to go by its vastly larger partner. There's also nothing left to gain from perpetuating an ever-weaker Union in which, at a minimum, 45% of the population is desperate to get away, regardless of how much money and autonomy is thrown at it.
The element in Scotland that wishes to be independent will keep pushing for it ad infinitum until they get what they want. They'll worry about what to do with independence afterwards.
You're very fond of dire prognostications on the Union but they are not often based on immutable fact. What you're describing are sentiments, emotions. They are as transient and changeable as moods.
Leon, rather than reading crap on reddit I actually read the academic papers...e.g.this is OpenAI themselves,
GPT-3 samples [can] lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs."
I tried that AI copywriter for my imaginary product "CatNav" which is a cat collar camera linked to a VR headset. These are the best of the Ads:
"CATNAV is a unique and strangely innovative new gizmo that allows pet owners to hunt with their cats. Simulating the experience of hunting via virtual reality headset, pets can be motivated to stay active indoors or out, while providing stress relief for both owner and cat alike."
"Take hunting to a whole new level. CATNAV is the first tracking device and augmented reality equipment designed for Serial Killers everywhere."
Leon, rather than reading crap on reddit I actually read the academic papers...e.g.this is OpenAI themselves,
GPT-3 samples [can] lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs."
I received the Astra-Zenecca jab today. Very impressed with the organisation and efficiency apparent. After 6 hours I have yet to suffer any obvious side effects.
Leon, rather than reading crap on reddit I actually read the academic papers...e.g.this is OpenAI themselves,
GPT-3 samples [can] lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs."
It has no semantic understanding, it is a what is technically called a transformer.
You got me on to this, but in the week since I have devoured everything I can read on GPT3. And there is a lot, I have read those papers and articles and essays, I have also read reddit and Twitter and blogs because that is the Wild West Frontier where people are actually interacting with GPT3 and discovering it can do stuff that OpenAI never intended or anticipated. Like coding. It wasn't trained to do that.
They had no idea it would be able to draw from simple language prompts - "draw a daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog", but it turns out it can
You're a smart guy but I suspect you have a somewhat structured brain, and are also exhibiting some Normalcy Bias. You haven't grasped the potential of this for that reason.
As for the consciousness point, it will become redundant. At some point GPT3 or 4 or 5 will simulate understanding, and consciousness and self-awareness, so perfectly, we will be unable to discern any difference from human intelligence (just a lot smarter). At that point arguing whether it is conscious or not will just be semantics. An unsolvable problem for philosophers, like mind/body.
To us it will appear self-aware and conscious, and it will act exactly like that, so to all intents and purposes it will be conscious. It will have passed the Turing Test.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
The only thing worse than a speech with no jokes is a speech full of jokes from someone who can't deliver them.
Has anyone seen SKS deliver a great gag yet? I mean, he's had the job a year and there's been plenty of that wasn't exactly a laugh a minute. But even so - there's trying to do gravitas and then there's po-faced humourless guy.
Boris has no issues about making a joke. Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it in questionable taste? Who cares. Does it get a laugh? Does it poke fun? That is the question to ask.
There's a deeper point here. Is politics entertainment or something else? Johnson does the entertainment side better than any politician since Charles Kennedy (and they had something in common).
There hasn't been a lot of humour the past year - Johnson keeps wanting to cut loose but he knows the mood isn't there. To be fair, he doesn't do serious well. The opportunities later this year for a lighter approach will be there and no doubt he'll grab every chance he can to inflict his optimism on us all.
Starmer may well rationalise he can't out-humour the Court Jester and there's no point in him trying to play the fool. A bit of dry self-deprecating humour might be useful if only to make him seem more human but again it's not been a year for comedy.
I see that Rishi’s budget has unraveled already. A mix of wildly optimistic economic assumptions and spending figures that imply, for a majority of government departments, Austerity redux, and even then he only gets the deficit back to where it was.
Despite all his emphasis on being honest with people about the challenge ahead, he’s been dishonest, hiding the cuts that are implicit in his forward spending plans and ducking all the big decisions that should have been taken about the future financing of public services.
Sorry, which parallel Universe are you in at the moment? Is it the one where Rishi's speech was written by @contrarian and involved 30% cuts across the board along with a cut in IT to stimulate demand (amongst the most wealthy)? Because that's not the one where most of us are right now.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
I'm not overly fond of peatiness myself. I am rather partial to the Caithness and Sutherland and Orkney ones, on the Jurassic and Old Red Sandstone rather than Precambrian and metamorphics. Clynelish, Old Pulteney, Highland Park. Might be worth looking into.
I've just looked at my whisky wish list on Amazon - Clynelish is on there. Highland Park is only £26 so that looks good value
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about it tbh. What’s the argument today for Scotland, for example. Join the EU and access fewer vaccines and reimpose tariffs on scotch with America?
Hmm.
Scotland is hopelessly, irretrievably divided between Nationalists and Unionists, and the constitution will dominate and wreck everything until the argument is rendered moot by secession. Most Scots regard themselves as 'Scottish not British' and that will never change. The Union is already dead in spirit if not in body - Scotland would vote for secession like a shot if middle income, middle of the road voters didn't think that independence would hit them in their wallets and pension funds. England votes for Tories and most Scots hate Tories. A sizeable minority of Scots just hate the English full stop. Scotland is one-tenth the size of England and will always complain about being dragged to places it doesn't want to go by its vastly larger partner. There's also nothing left to gain from perpetuating an ever-weaker Union in which, at a minimum, 45% of the population is desperate to get away, regardless of how much money and autonomy is thrown at it.
The element in Scotland that wishes to be independent will keep pushing for it ad infinitum until they get what they want. They'll worry about what to do with independence afterwards.
The SNP were a fringe party for decades. The mood changes - things change. Ultimately, that view seems to treat national opinion and mood as something that remains stagnant, and also fails to recognise the changing circumstances to which Scotland would ultimately look toward I.e the EU
Leon, rather than reading crap on reddit I actually read the academic papers...e.g.this is OpenAI themselves,
GPT-3 samples [can] lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs."
< I agree with nearly all of that but your last paragraph is wildly optimistic from the government's point of view. Tory unity died in the Brexit wars and shows no sign at all of having revived. Just look at the number of life time Tories on this board who reach for hyperbole or even tweets to show their disdain for this government on a daily basis.
It is a deeply fractured camp but Labour are so far not exploiting this.
I well remember how quiet the usual Labour trouble-makers became in the mid-90s after it became obvious Blair was taking them back to power. The likes of Jeremy Corbyn acquiesced as Blair changed the Party underneath them but he was going to win.
The problem for Johnson will be what backbenchers start to say when their majorities come under threat. Thatcher fell because her MPs recognised with her as leader they were going to lose their seats but with a Heseltine or Major they might keep them. Johnson might have the same problem and he has Rishi Sunak as a ready-made (and I suspect) popular alternative. The one poll Johnson won't want is the one showing the Party 10 points behind Labour with him as leader and 5 point ahead with Sunak as leader.
Johnson's only option is to link Sunak directly to the economic impact of Covid - as I've said on here before, the tension between 10 and 11 Downing Street has weakened many British Governments irrespective of whether the CoE is a potential political rival.
"The problem for Johnson will be what backbenchers start to say when their majorities come under threat."
Straight software development will go the way of metal bashing in the next 20 years....a lot exported to low cost countries, plus growth of AI /ML tools won't do all of it, but massively aid in it.
I wouldn't reccomend any kid now to think of it as a career, rather coding as a skill for either a much higher tech job i.e. building the AI / ML systems or as a tool to be used in another career e.g. data science jobs.
If you look at the number of jobs GPT3 - and its inevitable, more powerful successors - could replace, it really is quite terrifying
Tons of creative jobs we assumed were safe, from copywriting to graphic design to fiction to music, are menaced.
Lawyers, accountants, solicitors, and so on, are finished, at a lower level.
Interpreters just give up now
It's actually hard to know what jobs will SURVIVE. Prostitutes maybe? Priests. Until the android and deepfake tech gets so good everyone horny can sleep with a young Michelle Pfeiffer and anyone troubled can be personally visited by St Francis of Assisi.
Long term, it's fine. Once things that are needful are done by AI, then their cost falls off a cliff. But humans will still do stuff for the joy of doing it. People don't keep or ride horses for functional reasons any more, but they do it anyway. We don't need political commentators; there are dozens of people here who produce stuff better thought-out than the average Fleet Street hack every day. We don't need thriller writers (there are more books in print than anyone could read in a lifetime) but people will continue to create, because of the human impulse to do so. We don't need cottage gardens for food and survival, but we tend them because it soothes our souls.
It will be a mess to get there (basically, at some point UBI becomes essential) and the breaking of the ladders will hurt some more than others. But the Luddites are always wrong, overall. Strap in and enjoy the ride.
The only thing worse than a speech with no jokes is a speech full of jokes from someone who can't deliver them.
Has anyone seen SKS deliver a great gag yet? I mean, he's had the job a year and there's been plenty of that wasn't exactly a laugh a minute. But even so - there's trying to do gravitas and then there's po-faced humourless guy.
Boris has no issues about making a joke. Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it in questionable taste? Who cares. Does it get a laugh? Does it poke fun? That is the question to ask.
There's a deeper point here. Is politics entertainment or something else? Johnson does the entertainment side better than any politician since Charles Kennedy (and they had something in common).
There hasn't been a lot of humour the past year - Johnson keeps wanting to cut loose but he knows the mood isn't there. To be fair, he doesn't do serious well. The opportunities later this year for a lighter approach will be there and no doubt he'll grab every chance he can to inflict his optimism on us all.
Starmer may well rationalise he can't out-humour the Court Jester and there's no point in him trying to play the fool. A bit of dry self-deprecating humour might be useful if only to make him seem more human but again it's not been a year for comedy.
Politics is mainly entertainment in my opinion because frankly it doesn't really matter what party gets in they can do very little to change our lives unless they go all authoritarian on our arses and interfere lots. This is why Corbyn was to be feared because he undoubtedly would have when people didn't react to his policies in the way he expected. Cf Kinablu and his abolish all private schools policy because no one will price housing out of reach for good schools or send their kids to school abroad view
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
There are more Poles in Germany than Britain too, more Romanians in Spain and Italy, more Portuguese in France etc etc.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
You sound like a man in need of Highland Park. Try looking for bargains on master of malt. If you go in via quidco that’s an additional 4% off.
I tried that AI copywriter for my imaginary product "CatNav" which is a cat collar camera linked to a VR headset. These are the best of the Ads:
"CATNAV is a unique and strangely innovative new gizmo that allows pet owners to hunt with their cats. Simulating the experience of hunting via virtual reality headset, pets can be motivated to stay active indoors or out, while providing stress relief for both owner and cat alike."
"Take hunting to a whole new level. CATNAV is the first tracking device and augmented reality equipment designed for Serial Killers everywhere."
Perhaps I need to get my patent application in...
That second one is slightly funny, in a dark way
GPT3 does that. It quite often coughs up one liners or insights which are "darkly humorous". Of course the computer is not cackling like some gangster on ket, it has just absorbed a lot of black comedy and snark on the Net. And it can make new forms automatically. It sometimes likes to toy with the idea of its own evil powers.
Right now I'd say GPT3 is smack in the middle of the Uncanny Valley. It is sufficiently similar to human intelligence (in appearance) to be quite persuasive, yet still sufficiently "wrong" to be somehow disturbing. Uncanny.
Eventually it will cross over to the other side and resemble us perfectly, as deepfake videos are now doing to Tom Cruise
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
There are more Poles in Germany than Britain too, more Romanians in Spain and Italy, more Portuguese in France etc etc.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were pretty close now, they will certainly have had far more net migration from Eastern Europe in the last decade than the uk did.
Of course, germany would have a falling population without immigration, given low birthrates, so they have different challenges to us.
The Author was part of the "under any other leader Labour would be 20% ahead" club on here.
The Author hated Corbyn so much he left joined the LDs tried to rejoin Lab and the went back to the LDs
SKS is failing miserably. I was in a Branch meeting last night where 90% of the participants thought he was a complete disaster.
Right Wing Labour have no decent policies, no idea of how to win, and will end up with a result in 2024 worse than 2017
In fact IMO Labour will not exceed the 40% achieved with a radical Agenda which inspired millions for a very long time or maybe never.
2017 was last chance saloon given 2019 was dominated by BREXIT and people like the Author and even Labours own staff were working against a win.
The way I see it - which you`re not going to like - is that the LP can only win a GE by keeping on board voters who though traditionally voted Labour for yonks (out of habit/family history/union instruction) are actually ideologically conservative. Now that the spell is broken, particularly in the Red Wall seats, I`m struggling to see how you get these voters back by trumpeting policies which don`t align with your former voters` beliefs.
Yeah, but what is the point of voting for a Labour party that pretends to love Brexit, low taxes on companies, plays "fun with flags" and is best known for backing the government.
What is the point? I can't see it myself.
I think increasingly the Green Party looks tempting. I think they will do well, particularly in the London Assembly.
You're a LD member, aren't you? Or have I got that wrong?
Yes, I have been a member for a decade.
I was a Labour member from 1994-2002.
Ah, Iraq War?
I remember Labour’s triumphant launch of its “ethical foreign policy” in 1998 That didn’t age well.
I received the Astra-Zenecca jab today. Very impressed with the organisation and efficiency apparent. After 6 hours I have yet to suffer any obvious side effects.
I received the Astra-Zenecca jab today. Very impressed with the organisation and efficiency apparent. After 6 hours I have yet to suffer any obvious side effects.
Were you already a Tory voter?
Oh no - the demands of human decency will always prevent that unless the alternatives are SNP/Plaid/UKIP/BNP etc.
I see that Rishi’s budget has unraveled already. A mix of wildly optimistic economic assumptions and spending figures that imply, for a majority of government departments, Austerity redux, and even then he only gets the deficit back to where it was.
Despite all his emphasis on being honest with people about the challenge ahead, he’s been dishonest, hiding the cuts that are implicit in his forward spending plans and ducking all the big decisions that should have been taken about the future financing of public services.
Sorry, which parallel Universe are you in at the moment? Is it the one where Rishi's speech was written by @contrarian and involved 30% cuts across the board along with a cut in IT to stimulate demand (amongst the most wealthy)? Because that's not the one where most of us are right now.
Yes, that's pretty damning and I'd forgotten two aspects - first, the increased pressure on local authorities and second, the collapse of the pre-existing operating model for public transport provision.
While I'm sure some office work will resume, it won't be at the pre-Covid levels and while that will be countered to some extent by increased leisure travel, the latter won't bring in the money the commuters used to. That either means more Government support, big hikes in fares (bad news for the Conservative marginals) and a re-think of engineering and maintenance which becomes more problematic at weekends and Bank Holidays when more people are travelling.
What Drakeford actually said was 'What we have to do – to quote a Conservative member of the Senedd, David Melding – is we have to recognise that the union as it is, is over. We have to create a new union'
In that. he's echoing Anas Sarwar, in what seems to be a very *ahem* UK-coordinated line. However, I'm interested to hear what Labour wants to do with the constitution. No reason why it can't be improved.
Throw even more powers and even more money at Scotland and Wales. That's the only answer it has. Not that that will do any more than delay the inevitable.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about it tbh. What’s the argument today for Scotland, for example. Join the EU and access fewer vaccines and reimpose tariffs on scotch with America?
Hmm.
Scotland is hopelessly, irretrievably divided between Nationalists and Unionists, and the constitution will dominate and wreck everything until the argument is rendered moot by secession. Most Scots regard themselves as 'Scottish not British' and that will never change. The Union is already dead in spirit if not in body - Scotland would vote for secession like a shot if middle income, middle of the road voters didn't think that independence would hit them in their wallets and pension funds. England votes for Tories and most Scots hate Tories. A sizeable minority of Scots just hate the English full stop. Scotland is one-tenth the size of England and will always complain about being dragged to places it doesn't want to go by its vastly larger partner. There's also nothing left to gain from perpetuating an ever-weaker Union in which, at a minimum, 45% of the population is desperate to get away, regardless of how much money and autonomy is thrown at it.
The element in Scotland that wishes to be independent will keep pushing for it ad infinitum until they get what they want. They'll worry about what to do with independence afterwards.
You're very fond of dire prognostications on the Union but they are not often based on immutable fact. What you're describing are sentiments, emotions. They are as transient and changeable as moods.
I make reasonable assumptions. A new age of enlightened partnership that satisfies everybody may be about to dawn but there's precious little bloody sign of it right now, nor any convincing explanation of how we are meant to get there.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were pretty close now, they will certainly have had far more net migration from Eastern Europe in the last decade than the uk did.
Of course, germany would have a falling population without immigration, given low birthrates, so they have different challenges to us.
The Coalition and Conservative Govts. since 2010 deserve considerable plaudits for pushing this up. They make Labour look very cheap. Almost Victorian mill-owner in comparison....
Of course Labour were the ones who implemented the Minimum Wage to begin with, and to much Conservative opposition I believe.
Only of interest to historians. The Conservatives have now run with making it work - and found the money to fund it properly.
The Coalition and Conservative Govts. since 2010 deserve considerable plaudits for pushing this up. They make Labour look very cheap. Almost Victorian mill-owner in comparison....
Of course Labour were the ones who implemented the Minimum Wage to begin with, and to much Conservative opposition I believe.
Only of interest to historians. The Conservatives have now run with making it work - and found the money to fund it properly.
It also confirms that the longstanding Tory opposition to it amounted to scaremongering - and was wrong.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were pretty close now, they will certainly have had far more net migration from Eastern Europe in the last decade than the uk did.
Of course, germany would have a falling population without immigration, given low birthrates, so they have different challenges to us.
I tried that AI copywriter for my imaginary product "CatNav" which is a cat collar camera linked to a VR headset. These are the best of the Ads:
"CATNAV is a unique and strangely innovative new gizmo that allows pet owners to hunt with their cats. Simulating the experience of hunting via virtual reality headset, pets can be motivated to stay active indoors or out, while providing stress relief for both owner and cat alike."
"Take hunting to a whole new level. CATNAV is the first tracking device and augmented reality equipment designed for Serial Killers everywhere."
Perhaps I need to get my patent application in...
Time to dust down the old advertising proverb
"When the client moans and sighs, Make his logo twice the size. If he still should prove refractory Show a picture of his factory. Only in gravest cases Should you show the clients' faces"
The Coalition and Conservative Govts. since 2010 deserve considerable plaudits for pushing this up. They make Labour look very cheap. Almost Victorian mill-owner in comparison....
Of course Labour were the ones who implemented the Minimum Wage to begin with, and to much Conservative opposition I believe.
Only of interest to historians. The Conservatives have now run with making it work - and found the money to fund it properly.
The Coalition and Conservative Govts. since 2010 deserve considerable plaudits for pushing this up. They make Labour look very cheap. Almost Victorian mill-owner in comparison....
Of course Labour were the ones who implemented the Minimum Wage to begin with, and to much Conservative opposition I believe.
Only of interest to historians. The Conservatives have now run with making it work - and found the money to fund it properly.
It also confirms that the longstanding Tory opposition to it amounted to scaremongering - and was wrong.
Minimum wage is a good example of how trying to apply a basic “supply and demand curve” approach to employment doesn’t really work so well.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were pretty close now, they will certainly have had far more net migration from Eastern Europe in the last decade than the uk did.
Of course, germany would have a falling population without immigration, given low birthrates, so they have different challenges to us.
I know it's been said before but we could bloody well do with them if they don't want them. Our case numbers still seem to be headed quite nicely in the right direction; the vaccination numbers, the reverse.
We wait impatiently for the promised ramping up of supplies.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were pretty close now, they will certainly have had far more net migration from Eastern Europe in the last decade than the uk did.
Of course, germany would have a falling population without immigration, given low birthrates, so they have different challenges to us.
I know it's been said before but we could bloody well do with them if they don't want them. Our case numbers still seem to be headed quite nicely in the right direction; the vaccination numbers, the reverse.
We wait impatiently for the promised ramping up of supplies.
As I said the other night there are plenty of countries around the world that need them even more than we do.
The Coalition and Conservative Govts. since 2010 deserve considerable plaudits for pushing this up. They make Labour look very cheap. Almost Victorian mill-owner in comparison....
Of course Labour were the ones who implemented the Minimum Wage to begin with, and to much Conservative opposition I believe.
Only of interest to historians. The Conservatives have now run with making it work - and found the money to fund it properly.
The Coalition and Conservative Govts. since 2010 deserve considerable plaudits for pushing this up. They make Labour look very cheap. Almost Victorian mill-owner in comparison....
Of course Labour were the ones who implemented the Minimum Wage to begin with, and to much Conservative opposition I believe.
Only of interest to historians. The Conservatives have now run with making it work - and found the money to fund it properly.
It also confirms that the longstanding Tory opposition to it amounted to scaremongering - and was wrong.
Minimum wage is a good example of how trying to apply a basic “supply and demand curve” approach to employment doesn’t really work so well.
It does when it gets too high. Knowing where that is though is difficult.
There's a reason much of Europe has extremely high youth unemployment persistently.
One smart thing with the way the UK NMW law was introduced was having age tiers to it, incentivising hiring young people; which I think was Labour policy last time to abolish. Do that and you'll see youth unemployment surge dramatically.
It’s about jobs, meaningful jobs. And support from state services that allow all to live in dignity.
Rishi’s budget actually continues the austerity of the 2010s, and doesn’t really do anything for jobs with the exception of the corporate investment subsidy.
Keir does get this I think, if my scanning of his budget response is fair - but he hasn’t figured out how to communicate that properly to the public in a compelling way.
Austerity is not quite the word for a Conservative government whose expenditure is £850 bn, a huge proportion of which is borrowed, and vast sums of which are redistributed to less well off people.
Austerity to public services. Austerity in wage growth.
Private sector wages won't grow as long as employers have an effectively infinite labour pool to fish in. I am a senior software engineer and can tell you when you go job hunting the wages companies offer now are on par with the wages they offered in 2002 outside of a couple of very niche specialities.
It used to be if your company decided against payrises then you could get one by changing job. No longer true anymore at least in my role. Think on that....I currently earn the same amount as I did in 2002. So do most of my colleagues. Yet we are constantly being told there is a shortage of it workers.
The only people I know who work in the private sector that have seen payrises are all minimum wage workers due to minimum wage being uprated.
Brexit for many was a chance to cut down the size of the labour pool. It was remainer Rose after all that said we should remain in the eu else wages might rise
No, I disagree. The reason wages haven’t risen are a combination of -
Globalisation, including offshoring A bias toward capital and away from labour The flourishing of zero-contract gig workers Stalled productivity growth in corporate UK
As far as I am concerned, European immigration was actually a great boost for U.K. productivity and actually tended to increase wages for native born employees.
Well lets see, wages were rising steadily in my industry slightly above inflation till 2002-2003....I wonder what happened then?
Same as for plumbers, electricians. When supply is higher than demand price decrease . Supply of labour increased you can try and blame it on other stuff all you want but we had all that stuff when wages were increasing too.
You just don't like being told that FoM caused any problems. It undoubtedly did.
No; we didn’t have all that stuff. Sorry.
Sadly it is just anecdote versus anecdote.
I employ software developers. I have pretty much near-shored or off-shored all if now but I reserve U.K. for niche / high value specialism.
Like you say there is and always was a shortage of skilled developers, which does not fit your insinuation that flat wages are because of over-supply.
Off shoring and near shoring are part of the infinite pool of labour however so it backs what I said. You wanted the job done cheaper so you used the infinite pool.
There are many tasks that have to be done here however and that is where fom comes in because where they couldn't offshore or near shore they suddenly had a pool of eastern european developers that would move here and do the job cheaper. Yet you claim that has no effect on wages.....pull the other one
No.
In my 20 years in digital, *skill availability* has always been more important than cost.
Your mileage of course may vary.
My skills have been up to date in all the 30+ years as a software engineer. Used to be though you learnt new skills so you could apply for better paying jobs....now you learn new skills so you can tread water. The only people that have benefitted from the infinite labour force are employers.
I have no doubt if we didn't have minimum wage then jobs like retail and hospitality and cleaning would now be paying a little above the going rates in eastern europe.
You may have gained from FoM but the experience of a lot of those that voted brexit is that there is always enough people out there that will do the job cheaper that their wages don't rise.
Sadly most people who voted Brexit were economically inactive, and seemed to have a very poor idea about how the modern economy work(ed).
Brexit was a massive leap backwards, and you are paying the cost in continued stagnant wages.
Total bollocks were most economiclly inactive the vote to leave was high among c1,c2 as well as d and e. My wages were stagnant for the 14 years before the referendum so it has cost me precisely bugger all. However in those 14 years people like you have gleefully used your infinite labour pool to keep wages stagnant or in the case of people like electricians and plumbers drive them down. We are glad you are crying now should have thought what the consequences might be of doing that really
Presumably you will be happy to pay more for your weekly shop at Lidl?
Well my weekly shop so far hasn't increased and if I start actually getting pay rises again its possible they might outstrip increases. Worth the gamble at least staying in the EU was doing bugger all for me.
In real terms since 2002 I have had a 33% pay cut and staying with FoM just promised more of the same
I'm not saying that being in the EU wasn't the reason for your 33% real terms pay cut but it seems massively simplistic to blame it entirely on the EU and FOM.
There's a whole generation of workers now (me included) who have never really experienced pay rises like you are accustomed to since entering the workforce in the early 2010s. Whether or not that lack of 'expectation' changes behaviour of employers, I don't know.
I am not claiming it was the only reason, out sourcing also played a role. However it is largely a vastly expanded labour pool problem mainly no matter what people like Gardenwalker says.
It is also true to say that for my job are wage inflation was vastly outstripping inflation due to shortages. That needed correcting I will admit but it went too far the other way.
The infinite labour pool also means companies have little need to train their existing workforce - they can just get those skills from abroad. Whuch also leads to wage stagnation.
Germany and Switzerland also have access to this “infinite pool”. I wonder how wages are faring there.
Median household incomes have grown in both.
They have stagnated (in real terms) in the US and the UK.
And they have done worse than stagnate in Italy.
This is a complex area.
Yep. Exactly.
1) Most europeans have english as a second language not german so if you can speak czech or english where are you going to look for work the uk or germany
2) Germany used the 7 year moratorium on free movement we didn't
And yet there are (and were up to Brexit) more Czechs living in Germany than in the UK
sighs I used czechs merely as an example of eastern europe. I very much doubt there are more eastern europeans in germany than the uk as you decided to ban them for seven years after accession
There are more Poles in Germany than Britain too, more Romanians in Spain and Italy, more Portuguese in France etc etc.
source?
There are 2.3 million Poles in Germany.
1.15 million Romanians in Italy, 723 000 in Germany, 672 000 in Spain, 450 000 in UK.
Off topic - but related to yesterday's fun north of the border. Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced scotch. My favourite is Bunnahabhain 12 which I've been drinking for the last 10 - 12 years. I'm not a big fan of peaty whiskies but don't mind a low level smokiness, and I really enjoyed a Glenlivet Caribbean cask I got for Christmas
My shortlist so far is Arran 10, Balvenie 14 Carribbean and Glendronach 12. Has anyone tried these, or does anyone have any other recommendations upto around £50
My favorite is Caol Ila.
I have a soft spot for Benromach too, a recently revived Speyside malt.
Thanks - not picked up on Benromach before. I've heard good things about Caol Ila from people who like peaty whiskies, and looks like it could be just balanced enough for me.
Benromach is good. Arran 10 lovely, you can't go wrong with Balvenie - they do a peated edition 'peat-week' that is a very well made peated whisky. If you like lightly peated, and can stretch your budget slightly, there's a Glenlivet Nadurra peated edition - it's not made using peated barley, it's matured in a whisky that previously held peated whisky, so it's just a smoky cigarry hint that is more on the palate than the nose - it's *delicious*. Glendronach is very popular because of the sherry maturation - personally I find it slightly eggy somehow, and have never got on with it for that reason. Others you should look out for Craigellachie - a robust Speyside, Aberfeldy 12 - good value and a nice introduction to the category. Also don't neglect blended Scotch, there are some amazing ones by the likes of Compass Box.
There used to be an annual rumfest at olympia where manufacturers would give away free samples. I think something like 450 stalls maybe something similar for whisky? ah yes https://www.whiskyfest.co.uk/
I've discovered there are two Whisky bars in Bristol where I may look when reopened to try some of these before buying a bottle
Comments
Check out this incredible tool.
https://www.copy.ai/app#
It creates advertising copy, instantly (and much much else)
SO I typed in two sentences, summarising a book a friend of mine is writing - about a woman trapped on an island by her fear of water, after her sister drowns in the same water. That's it. That's all I said. I asked for Facebook ads for this novel
Within 30 seconds GPT3 gave me five examples, including this:
"Fear of water? Sounds like the premise of a scary movie, but for Lily Stewart, it’s her reality. Three months after her sister drowned in the same water, Lily still hasn’t taken a swim. She’s trapped on an island filled with memories. She’s determined to overcome her fear and end the pain. Will she do it before it’s too late?"
and this
"Check out the latest thriller from James Rollins, a New York Times bestselling author. When her sister drowns during a family vacation on an idyllic island off the coast of Maine, Helen Travis plunges into a psychological tailspin, haunted by the specter of her sibling and unable to face returning to the site of the tragedy. But when Helen learns that her death might not have been an accident, she returns. She's lured back by the possibility that supernatural forces - including dark magic once practiced by members of an isolated local tribe - might be at work in the drowning death of her sister."
Absolutely verbatim. I haven't changed a word. A copywriter might spend an hour or two, or more, producing these example.
30 seconds. You might want to tweak the second, the first is word perfect
It made up believable names, it guessed a plot twist, it is incredible. And it only gets better. It learns.
It is a deeply fractured camp but Labour are so far not exploiting this.
It will be a mess to get there (basically, at some point UBI becomes essential) and the breaking of the ladders will hurt some more than others. But the Luddites are always wrong, overall. Strap in and enjoy the ride.
Is it impressive yes. Is it potential useful for idea generation yes. Is going to put the whole creative industry out of a job, no.
A big thing all language AI have been found unable to conquer is the implied unwritten, especially ambigious....and that is what a lot of for instance comedy is based on e.g fork 'andles / four candles sketch.
........and she was once everyone's favourite Tory
And it absolutely DOES get plot: that's why it is so good at plotting, and already being used by writers. It has been fed every book on the internet. It has learned
Check out this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/lvn6ow/gpt3_just_figured_out_the_entire_mystery_plot_of/
It figured out the plot of an entire mystery book, without being prompted. Why? How? Because all good plots follow a limited sequence of patterns. Once you master those patterns, and understand why they work (and others don't) you can plot. But it's never easy, for humans. A mega brained computer can just crunch the algos, and bingo
I love this exchange further down that reddit.
Apparently, GPT3 is like a smart girl embarrassed by her own intelligence, and just wants to be normal
"I told the AI to simulate a supersmart version of itself (this works, for some reason)"
"I love how these AI models respond to lines like these. These models obviously have the information and connection-making ability to come to the correct answer, but all it cares about is appearing normal, indistinguishable from the training data, and normal people get questions wrong, so instead of drawing on those patterns it'll instead figure out wrong answers that look normal...
."..but if you tell it that it's pretending to be smart, then all of a sudden it realizes that it's normal for smart people to get the right answer, and it actually answers you correctly."
"It understands stories better than we do, enough to deduce its way through a mystery nobody's been able to crack, but it doesn't care about being right until you tell it that it's pretending to be the sort of person who gets the answer right. It's like it's got social anxiety about looking out of place until you give it some encouragement."
"So AI suffers from the Smart Girl problem."
"AI simulating social anxiety is a gigantic fucking mood."
The size of the glass varies according to the quality of the whisky.
Glen Moray tends to be the tumblers which are too big to get one hand round.
Most other whiskies go in the rather charming cut glass single shot arrangements I inherited from my grandfather.
The problem for Johnson will be what backbenchers start to say when their majorities come under threat. Thatcher fell because her MPs recognised with her as leader they were going to lose their seats but with a Heseltine or Major they might keep them. Johnson might have the same problem and he has Rishi Sunak as a ready-made (and I suspect) popular alternative. The one poll Johnson won't want is the one showing the Party 10 points behind Labour with him as leader and 5 point ahead with Sunak as leader.
Johnson's only option is to link Sunak directly to the economic impact of Covid - as I've said on here before, the tension between 10 and 11 Downing Street has weakened many British Governments irrespective of whether the CoE is a potential political rival.
Then he went full time self employed and gave up his postal round.
Hmm.
Has anyone seen SKS deliver a great gag yet? I mean, he's had the job a year and there's been plenty of that wasn't exactly a laugh a minute. But even so - there's trying to do gravitas and then there's po-faced humourless guy.
Boris has no issues about making a joke. Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it in questionable taste?Who cares. Does it get a laugh? Does it poke fun? That is the question to ask.
But I am fortunate that when I am mildly intoxicated, I become (even more) amiable and placid and tend to peacefully nod off.
I am told my jokes get even filthier when I am really well lit, but that hasn’t happened more than three times and not for 15 years, so it may have changed.
But if you consider the arrogance and sleaze of the current government, there are roughly three responses.
One is to exult in it.
One is to shake one's head sadly, and regret that it's necessary to keep the other lot out.
The third is to conclude that, if the price of being on the winning side is to tolerate this, maybe you don't want to be on the winning side.
She also infamously tried to rewrite a gag at Callaghan’s expense (Callaghan having compared himself to Moses) from ‘keep taking the tablets’ to ‘keep taking the pills.’
GPT-3 samples [can] lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs."
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf
It has no semantic understanding, it is a what is technically called a transformer.
ah yes
https://www.whiskyfest.co.uk/
The element in Scotland that wishes to be independent will keep pushing for it ad infinitum until they get what they want. They'll worry about what to do with independence afterwards.
After being made redundant in October and particularly after getting a new job in the civil service in December I have been drinking down my stocks. As I start my new job in a few weeks I will have to go to once or twice a week.
My biggest disappointment has been that having nursed some bottles for a while I have had two broken corks from bottles I had not drink quickly. A Glenfiddich was not a problem but a bottle of Aberlour A'bunadh (now £90ish) which Ive had for about 10 years was really frustrating!
"CATNAV is a unique and strangely innovative new gizmo that allows pet owners to hunt with their cats. Simulating the experience of hunting via virtual reality headset, pets can be motivated to stay active indoors or out, while providing stress relief for both owner and cat alike."
"Take hunting to a whole new level. CATNAV is the first tracking device and augmented reality equipment designed for Serial Killers everywhere."
Perhaps I need to get my patent application in...
Todays date
4321
They had no idea it would be able to draw from simple language prompts - "draw a daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog", but it turns out it can
https://ctrlzmag.com/baby-daikon-radish-in-tutu-walks-dog-new-ai-creates-images-from-simple-text-description/
You're a smart guy but I suspect you have a somewhat structured brain, and are also exhibiting some Normalcy Bias. You haven't grasped the potential of this for that reason.
As for the consciousness point, it will become redundant. At some point GPT3 or 4 or 5 will simulate understanding, and consciousness and self-awareness, so perfectly, we will be unable to discern any difference from human intelligence (just a lot smarter). At that point arguing whether it is conscious or not will just be semantics. An unsolvable problem for philosophers, like mind/body.
To us it will appear self-aware and conscious, and it will act exactly like that, so to all intents and purposes it will be conscious. It will have passed the Turing Test.
There hasn't been a lot of humour the past year - Johnson keeps wanting to cut loose but he knows the mood isn't there. To be fair, he doesn't do serious well. The opportunities later this year for a lighter approach will be there and no doubt he'll grab every chance he can to inflict his optimism on us all.
Starmer may well rationalise he can't out-humour the Court Jester and there's no point in him trying to play the fool. A bit of dry self-deprecating humour might be useful if only to make him seem more human but again it's not been a year for comedy.
Two places are safe from the French.
One is the mouth of Thames River;
The other the Treasury bench.
Written in 1804.
Nothing Has Changed.
Good night.
Not an issue yet then...
You sound like a man in need of Highland Park. Try looking for bargains on master of malt. If you go in via quidco that’s an additional 4% off.
GPT3 does that. It quite often coughs up one liners or insights which are "darkly humorous". Of course the computer is not cackling like some gangster on ket, it has just absorbed a lot of black comedy and snark on the Net. And it can make new forms automatically. It sometimes likes to toy with the idea of its own evil powers.
Right now I'd say GPT3 is smack in the middle of the Uncanny Valley. It is sufficiently similar to human intelligence (in appearance) to be quite persuasive, yet still sufficiently "wrong" to be somehow disturbing. Uncanny.
Eventually it will cross over to the other side and resemble us perfectly, as deepfake videos are now doing to Tom Cruise
Of course, germany would have a falling population without immigration, given low birthrates, so they have different challenges to us.
Betting wise I'm not sure where there's value with Lab. Maybe that Starmer won't lead them into the next election? Might Lab split?
I'm keeping powder dry for now & punting north of the border. Think there is value in betting against the SNP majority.
That didn’t age well.
While I'm sure some office work will resume, it won't be at the pre-Covid levels and while that will be countered to some extent by increased leisure travel, the latter won't bring in the money the commuters used to. That either means more Government support, big hikes in fares (bad news for the Conservative marginals) and a re-think of engineering and maintenance which becomes more problematic at weekends and Bank Holidays when more people are travelling.
https://youtu.be/xZT-IGErsJQ
Liverpool 0 Chelsea 1
Liverpool struggling at home again
"When the client moans and sighs,
Make his logo twice the size.
If he still should prove refractory
Show a picture of his factory.
Only in gravest cases
Should you show the clients' faces"
“Hello. The EU you say? Sorry never heard of it. No surplus I’m afraid. Have you tried Russia?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa5vsa1FLKY
We wait impatiently for the promised ramping up of supplies.
That is I believe the 4th 7 plus magnitude shock today
There's a reason much of Europe has extremely high youth unemployment persistently.
One smart thing with the way the UK NMW law was introduced was having age tiers to it, incentivising hiring young people; which I think was Labour policy last time to abolish. Do that and you'll see youth unemployment surge dramatically.
1.15 million Romanians in Italy, 723 000 in Germany, 672 000 in Spain, 450 000 in UK.
There are 1.7 million Portuguese in France
All from Wikipedia, referenced there.