Graffiti artwork on display in South Korea has been damaged by a couple who thought brushes and paint laid in front of the piece were for visitors' use.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Think there might be a difference at the micro and macro levels. Speed of money and multiplier effects hardly apply at the individual level; investment, of course, applies at both levels.
Then there's Reagan's twist: "you can't spend yourself rich any more than you can drink yourself sober." Not a Keynesian either - a sound money man. That's for the birds - inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past.
There is a nice distinction between "spending" and "investment" though: done properly investment can help you get richer. Even buying a car, if it is what you need to do your job (or at least get to it).
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Think there might be a difference at the micro and macro levels. Speed of money and multiplier effects hardly apply at the individual level; investment, of course, applies at both levels.
Then there's Reagan's twist: "you can't spend yourself rich any more than you can drink yourself sober." Not a Keynesian either - a sound money man. That's for the birds - inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past.
There is a nice distinction between "spending" and "investment" though: done properly investment can help you get richer. Even buying a car, if it is what you need to do your job (or at least get to it).
To get technical, the distinction is between consumption and investment. It's all spending. If your time period is long enough it's all consumption (saving is just deferred consumption).
Typical - I make a typo and out come the teachers to correct me.
I'd like to say it's like being back at school but it's not.
Perhaps it's true what they say - "inside every teacher there's a pedant trying to get out".
Why do you think we become teachers in the first place?
It also means that when pupils catch us out they take great delight in it (and I could claim that I do it to make a particular point memorable, but my classes know me too well...)
The decline in the death rate has also accelerated. If it continues as is then deaths from Covid should've almost stopped by the end of the month (averaging about 3-4 per day, i.e. we'd probably start seeing some zeroes.) The rolling weekly average didn't get down that low at all after the first wave, even in August, but now we have the vaccines at work of course. It's hugely encouraging.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Think there might be a difference at the micro and macro levels. Speed of money and multiplier effects hardly apply at the individual level; investment, of course, applies at both levels.
Then there's Reagan's twist: "you can't spend yourself rich any more than you can drink yourself sober." Not a Keynesian either - a sound money man. That's for the birds - inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past.
There is a nice distinction between "spending" and "investment" though: done properly investment can help you get richer. Even buying a car, if it is what you need to do your job (or at least get to it).
To get technical, the distinction is between consumption and investment. It's all spending. If your time period is long enough it's all consumption (saving is just deferred consumption).
Thanks: I knew there had to be a technical term for it.
Typical - I make a typo and out come the teachers to correct me.
I'd like to say it's like being back at school but it's not.
Perhaps it's true what they say - "inside every teacher there's a pedant trying to get out".
Why do you think we become teachers in the first place?
It also means that when pupils catch us out they take great delight in it (and I could claim that I do it to make a particular point memorable, but my classes know me too well...)
My response is, ‘I was just testing to see if you were paying attention.’
The daily numbers have updated. Today's Covid deaths: 10. The average for the last week is now down to 36 per day. There's still about 3,500 in hospital but we are definitely getting there.
Of course that's an average of only 16 people in hospital per NHS trust.
Typical - I make a typo and out come the teachers to correct me.
I'd like to say it's like being back at school but it's not.
Perhaps it's true what they say - "inside every teacher there's a pedant trying to get out".
Why do you think we become teachers in the first place?
It also means that when pupils catch us out they take great delight in it (and I could claim that I do it to make a particular point memorable, but my classes know me too well...)
My response is, ‘I was just testing to see if you were paying attention.’
The nearest thing you are actually going to get with the two attributes of being centre right and committed to carbon reduction environmental policies is one called the Conservative party.
The real choice is between parties committed to a gradualist and better technology based set of policies; and those based on idealism, virtue signalling, futile gestures and bits of back to nature.
It may be that both would work. Maybe both will help destroy humanity. Both may be completely unnecessary. Maybe one would work and the other not. I have not got a clue, and nor has anyone else. But I am pretty sure which one the UK voters will opt for; and pretty sure which one the Chinese government and USA voters will go for. So I hope it works because that is what you are going to get.
At the moment the Tory version of it is more worked out and coherent than the Labour version, but that isn't saying much.
The Conservative Party talks a lot about environmentalism - I well remember how terrified they were by the Greens after the 1989 European elections and for about six months after every speech by every Conservative Cabinet Minister had the word "green" in it somewhere.
To be fair, during the Coalition we saw a lot of interesting policy initiatives such as the Green Investment Bank but once the Tories got their majority and no longer had to take any notice of the LDs or anyone else they sold it off to an Australian bank.
Now, Sunak has seen some political mileage in promoting the idea and it's back on the table but valuable time and opportunities have been lost.
The daily numbers have updated. Today's Covid deaths: 10. The average for the last week is now down to 36 per day. There's still about 3,500 in hospital but we are definitely getting there.
It's great, but - I've been ignoring the deaths-by-date-reported for a couple of weeks now, as the volatility and noise in that particular metric overwhelms the signal. The deaths-by-date-of-death is the real data, although it's heavily lagged.
That, though, seems to be flattening out in the low thirties (deaths by the 31st are already up to 30). Not too concerned by this, though - with what we know of the efficacy of one shot of either Pfizer or AZ, we'd expect that when we've saturated the Groups 1-4 with one-jab-plus-3-5-weeks, we'd get a bit of a plateau: the remaining deaths would largely be the breakthrough deaths of one-jab-vaccinated people (with its 85% effectiveness at preventing death). We've seen Malmesbury's excellent graphs showing CFR flatlining for the older categories for a while, after all.
And now we're shifting hugely to second jabs, so we SHOULD see those numbers start to fall again within a week or two.
Cases, though - they definitely look to be on the retreat. Going straight to specimen dates and taking the weekly average, they've dropped a long way in just a week or so. We could be looking at them heading off towards an 11 day halving cycle again, looking at the rate of fall recently.
Can anyone provide an estimate on when hospitals should have emptied on current trajectory?
Depends what you mean by 'empty'?
There's currently 3,600 people in hospital which means only 16 people on average per NHS trust and only 42 people on average per NHS foundation trust. That's pretty empty already.
The daily numbers have updated. Today's Covid deaths: 10. The average for the last week is now down to 36 per day. There's still about 3,500 in hospital but we are definitely getting there.
Of course that's an average of only 16 people in hospital per NHS trust.
Meanwhile almost every country in Europe continues to faff about one way or another with who can and can't use AZT - while holding back thousands of vaccines for second doses.
I wonder why there is such a call for vaccine passports from many. They're going to be practically useless if deaths are gone.
It seems to me that we should continue the current reopening trajectory and not change it, it seems to be working just fine.
I have zero evidence for this but the level of flag flying for an initiative that could not be practically introduced until after the economy should be fully reopened in June does suggest to me that nudging the vaccine reluctant may have a lot to do with it. I have no way of evidencing that, it’s only a hunch, but it makes a certain amount of sense.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Think there might be a difference at the micro and macro levels. Speed of money and multiplier effects hardly apply at the individual level; investment, of course, applies at both levels.
Then there's Reagan's twist: "you can't spend yourself rich any more than you can drink yourself sober." Not a Keynesian either - a sound money man. That's for the birds - inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past.
"inflation is something kids nowadays only hear about as a myth from the distant past."
The daily numbers have updated. Today's Covid deaths: 10. The average for the last week is now down to 36 per day. There's still about 3,500 in hospital but we are definitely getting there.
It's great, but - I've been ignoring the deaths-by-date-reported for a couple of weeks now, as the volatility and noise in that particular metric overwhelms the signal. The deaths-by-date-of-death is the real data, although it's heavily lagged.
That, though, seems to be flattening out in the low thirties (deaths by the 31st are already up to 30). Not too concerned by this, though - with what we know of the efficacy of one shot of either Pfizer or AZ, we'd expect that when we've saturated the Groups 1-4 with one-jab-plus-3-5-weeks, we'd get a bit of a plateau: the remaining deaths would largely be the breakthrough deaths of one-jab-vaccinated people (with its 85% effectiveness at preventing death). We've seen Malmesbury's excellent graphs showing CFR flatlining for the older categories for a while, after all.
And now we're shifting hugely to second jabs, so we SHOULD see those numbers start to fall again within a week or two.
Cases, though - they definitely look to be on the retreat. Going straight to specimen dates and taking the weekly average, they've dropped a long way in just a week or so. We could be looking at them heading off towards an 11 day halving cycle again, looking at the rate of fall recently.
I waiver in my faith in Zoe as a leading indicator but that has shown a few hefty drops the last three or four days.
I wonder why there is such a call for vaccine passports from many. They're going to be practically useless if deaths are gone.
It seems to me that we should continue the current reopening trajectory and not change it, it seems to be working just fine.
I have zero evidence for this but the level of flag flying for an initiative that could not be practically introduced until after the economy should be fully reopened in June does suggest to me that nudging the vaccine reluctant may have a lot to do with it. I have no way of evidencing that, it’s only a hunch, but it makes a certain amount of sense.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
The 'lets import lots of people because it will increase GDP' fallacy.
How is that a fallacy? Just because you dislike an argument doesn't make it wrong.
It DOES increase GDP. And if you import the right people at the right age, it increases GDP per head.
Increasing gdp per head is an increase in prosperity. The thing about prosperity is that its a slow burn. You dont realise its happening.
I look back at old videos and pictures around yr 2000 and just how much things have changed. An interesting one is cars. I'm not talking about old cars look old because fashions and trends change, but the number of people driving old cars for the time.
Hardly anyone drives an old car now. Seriously, how many people do you know own a car past ten to twelve years and that despite the incredible reliability of current cars?
Look at what was classed as deprived, think about the winter fuel payments, now its utterly absurd that such wealthy demographics still get payments to heat their homes.
The only thing (and it is a massive thing) that has got worse for some is the housing availability linked to house price inflation.
It depends where you live. I drive a 13 year old Fiat 500 with 100k on the clock. Looks and drives like new, though did need a recon gearbox 20k ago.
I drive a 14 year old Ford Fiesta with 130k on the clock. Still going strong.
Luxury!
I drive a 18 year old VW Golf with I dont know what on the clock, and it never lets me down. Like putting on an old pair of slippers
I can never see the point of selling a car that still works. You don't get rich by spending money, and you can park an old banger anywhere and know it will still be there on your return.
You agree with anti-Keynesian George M Humphrey* then, that you can't spend yourself rich.
* Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury
Well, households are different to national economies, but even Keynes only advocated government spending in part of the business cycle, counter balanced by surplus in the good years. Something modern Keynsians are wont to forget.
The enthusiasm for deficit spending by Conservatives such as Johnson and Trump is partly driven by electoral cycles, but does have the advantage from a right wing perspective of increasing the cost of social spending, thereby reining in left wing governments. So if a left wing government proposes spending £20 billion extra per year on hospitals via increasing the deficit, it spooks the bond markets and increases the interest payable on the national debt. Those interest payments already cost us more than the defence budget, so a 1% rise costs us a lot. QE has changed things a bit, but cannot continue forever without consequences.
Late to the party: The problem with the Green Party is that has become something of a greeny-Corbynite mush. Just as likely to wibble on about the bedroom tax or trans rights than talk about environmental issues.
They need to focus 100% on 'green' issues - climate change, habitat loss, species loss, pollution, etc. And take a hard line. Be eco-authoritarian. Will this set a ceiling on support? Of course it will. But with every other party turning green round the edges they need to be at the vanguard.
It may take a split for such a 'proper' Green Party to come into being. And of course that will bugger them even more at the ballot box.
We are as one on this Sandy. Democracy won't save the planet. A Green Party has, at root, to be anti-the-species-that-caused-all-this. Most deep greens have simply given up. Best chance the planet has is to reduce rogue species numbers by, say, a virus that wipes out only humans ...
Actively killing people off is a bit harsh.
A virus that makes everyone sterile would be good.
Don't tempt Fate. There are rumours Long Covid does exactly that
A declining population for a century or so would do Britain, and overpopulated England in particular, a power of good. The trick would be to resist at all costs the temptation to import young people and allow the population pyramid to invert. Labour shortages would mean higher wages for the surviving working age population, along with the incentive to automate, which can both only be a good thing. The growing pension burden can be alleviated by ramping up the retirement age, whilst incentivizing part-time working so that low-to-middle income codgers can keep slogging away for longer. The latter part's not going to come as welcome news to anybody but the Ponzi scheme has to come to an end at some point.
Full employment should not be difficult to achieve under such circumstances. Anybody who's left who struggles to find work in the new, more efficient economy can be employed by the state to progressively demolish and rewild defunct urban areas.
Higher wages, more affordable housing, less pollution and transport congestion.
Also less economic growth, lower pensions, less innovation, more direlict areas.
Pros and cons.
I myself don't think England is overpopulated - about 92% of it is not developed.
England (as distinct from the UK - Wales and Scotland consisting largely of sparsely inhabited uplands) is more densely populated than every member of the EU27 except Malta. Let's not keep going shall we?
Wrong. The Netherlands has a denser population density.
Netherlands 423 per sq km England 432 per sq km
Netherlands is 500+ according to most sources.
According to my "Sunil's Commonwealth" Excel file, I have Netherlands (European bit) down as 419 per sq. km (2019 data).
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BBC News - Graffiti art defaced by spectators at South Korea gallery
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56623734
I'd like to say it's like being back at school but it's not.
Perhaps it's true what they say - "inside every teacher there's a pedant trying to get out".
It also means that when pupils catch us out they take great delight in it (and I could claim that I do it to make a particular point memorable, but my classes know me too well...)
The pedant is out and proud from the off.
It seems to me that we should continue the current reopening trajectory and not change it, it seems to be working just fine.
To be fair, during the Coalition we saw a lot of interesting policy initiatives such as the Green Investment Bank but once the Tories got their majority and no longer had to take any notice of the LDs or anyone else they sold it off to an Australian bank.
Now, Sunak has seen some political mileage in promoting the idea and it's back on the table but valuable time and opportunities have been lost.
That, though, seems to be flattening out in the low thirties (deaths by the 31st are already up to 30). Not too concerned by this, though - with what we know of the efficacy of one shot of either Pfizer or AZ, we'd expect that when we've saturated the Groups 1-4 with one-jab-plus-3-5-weeks, we'd get a bit of a plateau: the remaining deaths would largely be the breakthrough deaths of one-jab-vaccinated people (with its 85% effectiveness at preventing death). We've seen Malmesbury's excellent graphs showing CFR flatlining for the older categories for a while, after all.
And now we're shifting hugely to second jabs, so we SHOULD see those numbers start to fall again within a week or two.
Cases, though - they definitely look to be on the retreat. Going straight to specimen dates and taking the weekly average, they've dropped a long way in just a week or so. We could be looking at them heading off towards an 11 day halving cycle again, looking at the rate of fall recently.
There's currently 3,600 people in hospital which means only 16 people on average per NHS trust and only 42 people on average per NHS foundation trust. That's pretty empty already.
You mean, like pandemics 18 months ago?
The enthusiasm for deficit spending by Conservatives such as Johnson and Trump is partly driven by electoral cycles, but does have the advantage from a right wing perspective of increasing the cost of social spending, thereby reining in left wing governments. So if a left wing government proposes spending £20 billion extra per year on hospitals via increasing the deficit, it spooks the bond markets and increases the interest payable on the national debt. Those interest payments already cost us more than the defence budget, so a 1% rise costs us a lot. QE has changed things a bit, but cannot continue forever without consequences.