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Following the explosive testimony by Dom Cummings Matt Hancock now betting favourite to be next Cabi

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  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 5,331
    Wonder how this would all have played out had Johnson fired Cummings a year ago for breaching lockdown regulations as he surely should have done.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,835

    Breaking news: News journalists & presenters around the world are shitting bricks as the Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch Covid-19 variant has been identified in Wales.

    Drakeford will be able to pronounce it

    There, I have said a nice thing about him
    The Drake can pronounce anything, in any language, human or alien.
    What accent does he have,. as a matter of interest?
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,454
    Carnyx said:

    Breaking news: News journalists & presenters around the world are shitting bricks as the Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch Covid-19 variant has been identified in Wales.

    Drakeford will be able to pronounce it

    There, I have said a nice thing about him
    The Drake can pronounce anything, in any language, human or alien.
    What accent does he have,. as a matter of interest?
    Yes
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    kle4 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Britain Elects
    @BritainElects

    Share of voters who trust/do not trust what [X] has to say about the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis:

    Boris Johnson
    Trust: 38%
    Do not trust: 55%

    Dominic Cummings
    Trust: 14%
    Do not trust: 75%

    via
    @YouGov"

    https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1397580519731343362

    So many people ignoring him apparently.

    But in all seriousness it's about what you'd expect - it's like the Salmond rating, old opponents still don't trust him even if he is attacking a shared enemy, and new opponents who used to be allies will hate him with the fire of a thousand suns.
    I believe that polling predates today’s jollities. Would be interesting if they had caused any changes.
    Given the low base, and that lots of people will agree with many of his criticism - poor vector though he may be we all know there are good criticisms to be made - I'd be unsurprised if his numbers improved a bit.

    He could consider running for office, that'd be amusing.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385

    Wonder how this would all have played out had Johnson fired Cummings a year ago for breaching lockdown regulations as he surely should have done.

    The government would not have been so hopelessly disorganised and incompetent in the autumn, for a start.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,835

    Carnyx said:

    Breaking news: News journalists & presenters around the world are shitting bricks as the Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch Covid-19 variant has been identified in Wales.

    Drakeford will be able to pronounce it

    There, I have said a nice thing about him
    The Drake can pronounce anything, in any language, human or alien.
    What accent does he have,. as a matter of interest?
    Yes
    Klingon? Valleys? I am crap at those things so was wondering how he comes over in that sense.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377

    No-one cares about what Cummings has to say.

    Next.

    It's not a matter of whether anybody 'cares' what Cummings says.
    It's whether what he says is interesting.
    And it was really interesting to many of us.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,594
    Though something new I've discovered today is that things might be a bit worrying covid wise in Scotland.

    The number in hospital has increased from 70 to 97 during the last week and from a low point of 58 in early May.

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Cases have also increased:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Nothing to panic about yet but it does explain why Nicola and Devi have lost their enthusiasm for zero covid ideas.
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,385

    Though something new I've discovered today is that things might be a bit worrying covid wise in Scotland.

    The number in hospital has increased from 70 to 97 during the last week and from a low point of 58 in early May.

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Cases have also increased:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Nothing to panic about yet but it does explain why Nicola and Devi have lost their enthusiasm for zero covid ideas.


    Health is fully devolved. Oops
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496

    Setting aside one's personal views of Cummings, Barnard Castle etc. today's session was absolutely gripping, endlessly fascinating. I suspect few commentators on here or elsewhere watched the whole thing, and the snippets don't do it justice.

    If I were still teaching politics (which I did in a previous life), I could get a whole term's teaching out of it, entitled something like "The Machinery of Government in a Time of Crisis". Tons of material on the PM, ministers, SPADs, the civil service, departments, government agencies etc. etc. Dom covered a vast range of stuff in the seven hours.

    I'd then set the following essay: "Assess the strengths and weaknesses of our current political system and the machinery of government for dealing with a crisis like Covid". (Obviously, students would draw on a much wider range of stuff than Dom's tour de force). I'm with Richard Tyndall and others - it was gripping as well as coruscating, and may have more influence on future events than some suspect. Or not, who knows.

    I watched the whole session and it was fascinating and a good insight into the conflicts between personalities and groupings

    I have no idea how this will influence our politics largely because Starmer and Labour are not at the races but also Cummings has little creditability with the public
    IMHO it is all fascinating and educational, and worthy of having essays set and all that. But a variety of factors make it for now electorally insignificant.

    It's the past, and other countries like us did badly at the time, and we have made up ground with vaccination.

    DC is a flawed witness; it's all complicated and open to expert complicators to find meandering answers to things over time; anyway everything can be chucked in the 'Review/Enquiry' laundry basket.

    The nature of Boris is priced in, and nothing new here, no smoking gun. Boris was never going to last for ever but he hasn't gone yet.

    The opposition is useless. Rentoul today took time out to point out the weakness of Labour's response. Even on C4 News tonight the opposition was invisible.

    Even if Boris loses Batley and the Hams I don't think the damage will be long lasting.

    In the longer run, once the tide turns, people will wonder why it didn't turn now. Zeitgeist is zeitgeist and will always be both obvious and an impenetrable mystery.


  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    No-one cares about what Cummings has to say.

    Next.

    It's not a matter of whether anybody 'cares' what Cummings says.
    It's whether what he says is interesting.
    And it was really interesting to many of us.
    To a degree - its impact may be less than it could or should be if people do not believe or care what he says. But then people won't care about the actual details during any future inquiry either, other than point scoring opportunities, when useful stuff will also be said.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207
    Iran seems to be having a run of bad luck

    https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/1397508316717326345

    BREAKING: Large Explosion reported at a Petrochemical plant in S. #Iran this morning. At least one dead.

    Third such mysterious incident in Iran in less than 5 days:
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    edited May 2021

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,377
    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore it because it makes them uncomfortable
    You haven't ignored it. Do you feel uncomfortable?
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,425
    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385
    Oh my goodness, although excellent news for the thoroughly deserving James Bracey and indeed Haseeb Hameed this is cruel on so many levels.

    Ben Foakes out for three months with freak injury after slipping while walking in his socks.

    https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/news/haseeb_hameed_sam_billings_called_up_england_test_squad_ben_foakes_injured.html
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,594
    Did Cummings really claim that we could have had vaccines much sooner ?

    Given that not only did we get them before any other country but also long before it was initially predicted it seems doubtful.

    Or does Dom think he knows better than the pharma companies and regulators ?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    The whole world should have stopped flights from China when the videos were going around of welded building doors, tanks in the streets and armed hazmat suit snatch squads. But everyone was too afraid of upsetting China. Pathetic really.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,425
    tlg86 said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Car giant Nissan is reportedly in advanced talks to build a huge electric car battery plant in the UK.

    Will they charge us?
    That's a shocking pun.
    Well, I expected a negative response.
    It really would be terminal for the British car industry.
    I think the position will be static.
    These puns are shocking. Even by our standards.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Taz said:

    Though something new I've discovered today is that things might be a bit worrying covid wise in Scotland.

    The number in hospital has increased from 70 to 97 during the last week and from a low point of 58 in early May.

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Cases have also increased:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Nothing to panic about yet but it does explain why Nicola and Devi have lost their enthusiasm for zero covid ideas.


    Health is fully devolved. Oops
    The increase is a substantial one in proportionate terms but is, of course, extremely small in absolute terms. And there's no particular reason to suppose that it represents the start of anything serious.

    Though if it does then it'll all turn out to be the fault of the Tories, I'm sure. This is Scotland we are talking about, after all. Everything good in Scotland emanates from Holyrood; everything bad from Westminster.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,835
    edited May 2021

    Though something new I've discovered today is that things might be a bit worrying covid wise in Scotland.

    The number in hospital has increased from 70 to 97 during the last week and from a low point of 58 in early May.

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Cases have also increased:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Nothing to panic about yet but it does explain why Nicola and Devi have lost their enthusiasm for zero covid ideas.


    The vast majority is in [edit] parts of greater Glasgow. Which is interesting in view of recent events there, though Glasgow was usually something of a focal point.

    Rather low levels elsewhere, and the only two other foci are small local authorities so it might be a statistical effect.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,594
    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    We knew that already.

    Although that aspect had little effect.

    It was unrestricted travel to and from Europe which was the big problem.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore it because it makes them uncomfortable
    You haven't ignored it. Do you feel uncomfortable?
    No, but I am uniquely brave
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874

    No-one cares about what Cummings has to say.

    Next.

    I imagine those supportive of the Prime Minister will be hoping it was that easy but Cummings's comments can't be so easily dismissed because we know he was at the very centre of events.

    Hancock was finished before this if I'm being honest - he has some serious questions to answer about the way the virus was allowed to spread through care homes and some of the failures of "test and trace" and PPE supply should end up directly with him.

    It was interesting both Sunak and Raab came out very well and you just wonder if there's a post-Johnson Government starting to take shape - Sunak as PM, Raab as FS and Truss as Chancellor (perhaps). For some people, the very incarnation of the phrase "dream team", for others less so.

    As for Johnson, this adds to a cumulative effect which his most ardent supporters will readily dismiss because the man can do no wrong in their eyes. For others, it's a drip-drip of stories which start to raise questions about competence and judgement and once the seeds of doubt are sown, they can quickly germinate in the right atmosphere.

    Carrie Symonds also comes out of this poorly or rather Cummings portrays her more as a distraction than Lady Macbeth but the inference her priorities and wishes were of more import to the Prime Minister than those of the country will resonate. Sometimes, at times of crisis, it's easier to deal with the trivial than with the serious which appears impervious to resolution but that's not how some will see it.

    Does Cummings see a "return" as Adviser at the court of King Rishi? I suspect he will never have the influence he once enjoyed and I struggle to really understand what it is Cummings wants or understands. He has a view of the function of Government which isn't that practical and is perhaps one of those who can't cope without having a war to fight or a Goliath to slay.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496

    Wonder how this would all have played out had Johnson fired Cummings a year ago for breaching lockdown regulations as he surely should have done.

    What would have been interesting would have been if DC today had told a different version of the Durham/BC stay and visit, suggested that Boris was a mug to have kept him on, that lawyers wrote his Rose Garden script (obvs - see David Allen Green on the subject) to a lawyer's agenda and that Boris knew perfectly well what was going on, and colluded.

    My feeling is that in accepting general blame for what went on, DC was being a bit pious but also suspiciously non specific. To recover credibility he needed to be detailed and honest about his own failings and to set the record straight on the Durham/BC episode. I don't think he was prepared to go that far towards transparency and accountability. Which leaves his evidence flailing a bit.

  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860
    edited May 2021
    Meanwhile in other breaking news, the island independents and various other minor parties have succeeded in outvoting the Conservatives 20 to 18 to take control of Isle of Wight Council.

    The ex UKIP guy spoke about how the voters had rejected the Tories and argued for change, backing the Independents. The single Labour councillor gave a somewhat less than convincing personal reason for not bothering to turn up. He is of course bound by Labour’s silly rules that make formal deals with other parties very difficult.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    I sometimes wonder where the world would be if we’d had a different Republican presidency with a similar policy platform but a more polished and less egotistical frontman.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    I sometimes wonder where the world would be if we’d had a different Republican presidency with a similar policy platform but a more polished and less egotistical frontman.
    Very true. Cf the lab leak hypothesis. Dismissed so fiercely partly because Trump espoused it
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860

    Obviously I wasn't there and can't know for sure, but my hunch is that Cummings' accusations against Matt Hancock for 'lying' (a very strong word, and one which shouldn't be thrown around lightly) are unfair. My guess is that what Hancock said on various occasions and which turned out to be wrong, such as regarding PPE availability and testing before discharge of patients to care homes, were actually instances of him not probing properly to find out what was actually going on, rather than him deliberately lying.

    Incompetence isn’t a great defence for a government minister, though.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,793
    IanB2 said:

    Meanwhile in other breaking news, the island independents and various other minor parties have succeeded in outvoting the Conservatives 20 to 18 to take control of Isle of Wight Council.

    The ex UKIP guy spoke about how the voters had rejected the Tories and argued for change, backing the Independents. The single Labour councillor gave a somewhat less than convincing personal reason for not bothering to turn up. He is of course bound by Labour’s silly rules that make formal deals with other parties very difficult.

    Are the Island independents a new incarnation of UKIP?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860
    stodge said:

    No-one cares about what Cummings has to say.

    Next.

    I imagine those supportive of the Prime Minister will be hoping it was that easy but Cummings's comments can't be so easily dismissed because we know he was at the very centre of events.

    Hancock was finished before this if I'm being honest - he has some serious questions to answer about the way the virus was allowed to spread through care homes and some of the failures of "test and trace" and PPE supply should end up directly with him.

    It was interesting both Sunak and Raab came out very well and you just wonder if there's a post-Johnson Government starting to take shape - Sunak as PM, Raab as FS and Truss as Chancellor (perhaps). For some people, the very incarnation of the phrase "dream team", for others less so.

    As for Johnson, this adds to a cumulative effect which his most ardent supporters will readily dismiss because the man can do no wrong in their eyes. For others, it's a drip-drip of stories which start to raise questions about competence and judgement and once the seeds of doubt are sown, they can quickly germinate in the right atmosphere.

    Carrie Symonds also comes out of this poorly or rather Cummings portrays her more as a distraction than Lady Macbeth but the inference her priorities and wishes were of more import to the Prime Minister than those of the country will resonate. Sometimes, at times of crisis, it's easier to deal with the trivial than with the serious which appears impervious to resolution but that's not how some will see it.

    Does Cummings see a "return" as Adviser at the court of King Rishi? I suspect he will never have the influence he once enjoyed and I struggle to really understand what it is Cummings wants or understands. He has a view of the function of Government which isn't that practical and is perhaps one of those who can't cope without having a war to fight or a Goliath to slay.
    One thing now guaranteed is that no government is going to employ Cummings again!
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 21,661
    The government is a basket case. Not news. Nevertheless glad I’m not a supporter of said basket case.

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    But the people shouting "racist" would never have voted for Boris.

    I the explanation is simpler: Boris Johnson wants London to be the world capital. He has a pretty Londonocentric view. He wants everyone who's anyone to have a home here, and to want to live here. And - while it sucks for Brits wanting affordable housing in the capital - this strategy has brought in a lot of tax and business into the UK.

    But making London the centre of the world meant leaving the borders open. If you couldn't get to and from London, why would you want to live there?
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    ydoethur said:

    Oh my goodness, although excellent news for the thoroughly deserving James Bracey and indeed Haseeb Hameed this is cruel on so many levels.

    Ben Foakes out for three months with freak injury after slipping while walking in his socks.

    https://www.thecricketer.com/Topics/news/haseeb_hameed_sam_billings_called_up_england_test_squad_ben_foakes_injured.html

    Pleased for Hameed in particular, he looked such a star when he made his debut.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,991
    Floater said:

    Iran seems to be having a run of bad luck

    https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/1397508316717326345

    BREAKING: Large Explosion reported at a Petrochemical plant in S. #Iran this morning. At least one dead.

    Third such mysterious incident in Iran in less than 5 days:

    People being very careless in these factories over the past week....
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860
    edited May 2021
    Cookie said:

    IanB2 said:

    Meanwhile in other breaking news, the island independents and various other minor parties have succeeded in outvoting the Conservatives 20 to 18 to take control of Isle of Wight Council.

    The ex UKIP guy spoke about how the voters had rejected the Tories and argued for change, backing the Independents. The single Labour councillor gave a somewhat less than convincing personal reason for not bothering to turn up. He is of course bound by Labour’s silly rules that make formal deals with other parties very difficult.

    Are the Island independents a new incarnation of UKIP?
    No, if anything they are a reincarnation of the Liberal/LibDems that used to run the island, although the leader of the new “alliance” group (and now of the council) was originally elected as a Conservative and they take in people from a range of backgrounds.

    The UKIPpers renamed themselves the ‘Vectis Party’ and only got one councillor re-elected.

    Meanwhile the new Tory (opposition) leader is a defector from UKIP.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    The greatest trick many companies have managed is to make share purchasers believe they are not a thing maker or deliverer when they are in fact a thing maker or deliver.

    Tesla is a thing maker.
    Uber is a thing deliverer

    Both have managed to convince investors that they are software companies with the implied margin to match.

    It truly is impressive and also shows that rich people have too much money and should be taxed and keep being taxed until they develop some common sense.


  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    I sometimes wonder where the world would be if we’d had a different Republican presidency with a similar policy platform but a more polished and less egotistical frontman.
    Oh, there's a lot in that platform that is attractive to voters.

    But there's also a lot that is contradictory in the platform: Trump took on China on while withdrawing from the rest of the world. That embolden them rather than constraining them.
  • Leon said:

    I know you're All About Dom, but the lab leak story is pretty mind-blowing: in particular, the way the media have reported it and how they have changed their stance 180 degrees without shame or apology. This thread. My God.


    "Drew Holden
    @DrewHolden360

    That the Covid pandemic could’ve leaked from a lab in Wuhan went from terrible, racist conspiracy theory to plausible overnight for the mainstream media, without a shred of accountability.

    If you don’t believe me, look at these stories side-by-side, then vs. now"


    "But it wasn’t just NYT. There’s a lot of ammo from @CNN, too.

    Not even two months ago, they ran a piece writing off the lab leak theory as “like something out of a comic book.”

    Yesterday, the tone had changed, without any reference to their own role in the previous debate."

    "For @BBCNews, the lab leak theory went from a conspiracy theory on par with China’s suggestion that the US created the virus to “all hypotheses are on the table” without an ounce of self awareness."

    I agree with one of his conclusions

    "Instead, because they hated Trump so much, they preferred to trust a lab run by shadowy hostile autocrats who had every incentive to lie (and long history of lying) about something that could turn out to be the most consequential coverup in living memory.

    That’s...not good."

    Whole thread worth a look. A lesson here

    https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1397334751774658562?s=20

    Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,822
    IanB2 said:

    Obviously I wasn't there and can't know for sure, but my hunch is that Cummings' accusations against Matt Hancock for 'lying' (a very strong word, and one which shouldn't be thrown around lightly) are unfair. My guess is that what Hancock said on various occasions and which turned out to be wrong, such as regarding PPE availability and testing before discharge of patients to care homes, were actually instances of him not probing properly to find out what was actually going on, rather than him deliberately lying.

    Incompetence isn’t a great defence for a government minister, though.
    I thought it was one of the two pre-requisites?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,496
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    O sancta simplicitas.

    If you think a witness is a genuine witness of truth then they can be mistaken but they won't be lying or misleading ever.

    If you think a witness has an agenda or agendas beyond full and transparent truth it is unwise to accept anything they say unless it is independently corroborated.

    This

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0tWyhkoP5c

    would give many people something to think about as to credibility.


  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    edited May 2021
    IanB2 said:

    Obviously I wasn't there and can't know for sure, but my hunch is that Cummings' accusations against Matt Hancock for 'lying' (a very strong word, and one which shouldn't be thrown around lightly) are unfair. My guess is that what Hancock said on various occasions and which turned out to be wrong, such as regarding PPE availability and testing before discharge of patients to care homes, were actually instances of him not probing properly to find out what was actually going on, rather than him deliberately lying.

    Incompetence isn’t a great defence for a government minister, though.
    No, but it is generally more likely - outright lying is too risky to attempt as much as people suggest it.

    And there is a grand tradition in politics utilising a 'I'm stupid' defence when the alternative is even worse.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,277
    edited May 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    But the people shouting "racist" would never have voted for Boris.

    I the explanation is simpler: Boris Johnson wants London to be the world capital. He has a pretty Londonocentric view. He wants everyone who's anyone to have a home here, and to want to live here. And - while it sucks for Brits wanting affordable housing in the capital - this strategy has brought in a lot of tax and business into the UK.

    But making London the centre of the world meant leaving the borders open. If you couldn't get to and from London, why would you want to live there?
    More likely, as Cummings implies, it is a mixture of these. A desire not to be like racist Donald, plus a desire to keep London open, plus a general sense of helping business

    You clearly don’t know elite people in London, if you think they would laugh off a suggestion of racism, or an association with Trump. This applies to civil servants as much as politicians.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,585
    Floater said:

    Iran seems to be having a run of bad luck

    https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/1397508316717326345

    BREAKING: Large Explosion reported at a Petrochemical plant in S. #Iran this morning. At least one dead.

    Third such mysterious incident in Iran in less than 5 days:

    Oh no, such terrible bad luck three times in a week.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    The greatest trick many companies have managed is to make share purchasers believe they are not a thing maker or deliverer when they are in fact a thing maker or deliver.

    Tesla is a thing maker.
    Uber is a thing deliverer

    Both have managed to convince investors that they are software companies with the implied margin to match.

    It truly is impressive and also shows that rich people have too much money and should be taxed and keep being taxed until they develop some common sense.


    How many other software companies are there selling a software package to the retail market at $10k a pop?

    I love all this arrogance from people who missed the boat. I don’t have a mortgage because I was paying attention from about 2013 onwards and put down half a years pay.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Carnyx said:

    Though something new I've discovered today is that things might be a bit worrying covid wise in Scotland.

    The number in hospital has increased from 70 to 97 during the last week and from a low point of 58 in early May.

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Cases have also increased:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Nothing to panic about yet but it does explain why Nicola and Devi have lost their enthusiasm for zero covid ideas.


    The vast majority is in [edit] parts of greater Glasgow. Which is interesting in view of recent events there, though Glasgow was usually something of a focal point.

    Rather low levels elsewhere, and the only two other foci are small local authorities so it might be a statistical effect.
    I would infer from the fact that Glasgow has become a Plague hotspot, but Edinburgh and Dundee haven't, that the bulk of Scots of Indian descent live in Glasgow. That's based, in turn, on the assumption that the major English clusters of Indian variant cases (in parts of Lancs, W Yorks and Beds) have all been seeded by significant numbers of infected persons rushing back from India once the red list announcement was made, and then spreading it amongst sections of the community that have been comparatively tardy in taking up the offer of vaccination.

    I'd certainly concur that the apparent spike in the case rate in Clackmannanshire is a statistical anomaly related to its very small size. It's not even the first occasion on which that local authority has stuck out like a sore thumb, for exactly that reason, in recent times.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385

    Floater said:

    Iran seems to be having a run of bad luck

    https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/1397508316717326345

    BREAKING: Large Explosion reported at a Petrochemical plant in S. #Iran this morning. At least one dead.

    Third such mysterious incident in Iran in less than 5 days:

    People being very careless in these factories over the past week....
    Is Mo ssad about it?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723
    Boris needs a dead cat explosive new revelation from Harry to take this off the front pages
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723

    Leon said:

    I know you're All About Dom, but the lab leak story is pretty mind-blowing: in particular, the way the media have reported it and how they have changed their stance 180 degrees without shame or apology. This thread. My God.


    "Drew Holden
    @DrewHolden360

    That the Covid pandemic could’ve leaked from a lab in Wuhan went from terrible, racist conspiracy theory to plausible overnight for the mainstream media, without a shred of accountability.

    If you don’t believe me, look at these stories side-by-side, then vs. now"


    "But it wasn’t just NYT. There’s a lot of ammo from @CNN, too.

    Not even two months ago, they ran a piece writing off the lab leak theory as “like something out of a comic book.”

    Yesterday, the tone had changed, without any reference to their own role in the previous debate."

    "For @BBCNews, the lab leak theory went from a conspiracy theory on par with China’s suggestion that the US created the virus to “all hypotheses are on the table” without an ounce of self awareness."

    I agree with one of his conclusions

    "Instead, because they hated Trump so much, they preferred to trust a lab run by shadowy hostile autocrats who had every incentive to lie (and long history of lying) about something that could turn out to be the most consequential coverup in living memory.

    That’s...not good."

    Whole thread worth a look. A lesson here

    https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1397334751774658562?s=20

    Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

    Quite.....
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,860
    edited May 2021
    kle4 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Obviously I wasn't there and can't know for sure, but my hunch is that Cummings' accusations against Matt Hancock for 'lying' (a very strong word, and one which shouldn't be thrown around lightly) are unfair. My guess is that what Hancock said on various occasions and which turned out to be wrong, such as regarding PPE availability and testing before discharge of patients to care homes, were actually instances of him not probing properly to find out what was actually going on, rather than him deliberately lying.

    Incompetence isn’t a great defence for a government minister, though.
    No, but it is generally more likely - outright lying is too risky to attempt as much as people suggest it.

    And there is a grand tradition in politics utilising a 'I'm stupid' defence when the alternative is even worse.
    I suspect he knew very well that there wasn’t a plan in place to test all hospital patients returning to care homes, when he said it, but glibly thought he could rush back and put one into place before it came to matter. Then found it was a lot more difficult to achieve than he had imagined.

    He probably reasoned that if he owned up to there not being a plan at cabinet, he would simply be instructed to go put one in place right away, so he may as well lie about it and avoid the bollocking.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    So basically nothing was revealed today what we didn't already know.

    Cummings confirmed that one of the reasons we kept the borders was because closing them, according to groupthink, is ‘racist’

    Explosive.

    Everyone will ignore this revelation because it makes them uncomfortable
    Even that smells like bollocks?

    This Government is very anti-Woke. I'd be far more convinced that it was down to business interests or Tory donors, to be honest.
    You saw what happened to Trump when he (correctly) closed borders with China.

    Racist!!

    This is wholly plausible.

    You either believe Cummings or you don’t, you can’t cherry pick the opinions you like. I am sadly convinced that virtually everything he said is true, even if depresses me. And it does depress me

    I even believe him about Barnard Castle. He did not come across as a liar
    But the people shouting "racist" would never have voted for Boris.

    I the explanation is simpler: Boris Johnson wants London to be the world capital. He has a pretty Londonocentric view. He wants everyone who's anyone to have a home here, and to want to live here. And - while it sucks for Brits wanting affordable housing in the capital - this strategy has brought in a lot of tax and business into the UK.

    But making London the centre of the world meant leaving the borders open. If you couldn't get to and from London, why would you want to live there?
    More likely, as Cummings implies, it is a mixture of these. A desire not to be like racist Donald, plus a desire to keep London open, plus a general sense of helping business

    You clearly don’t know elite people in London, if you think they would laugh off a suggestion of racism, or an association with Trump. This applies to civil servants as much as politicians.
    Wait: I thought I was an elite person in London (and LA)?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Are we this easy to nudge? Probably.


    https://twitter.com/thetenzer/status/1397572540634210306
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
    Normal inflation or more funny money assst price inflation?

    I’m not sure, something like 7-10 years if it goes right. Probably it range trades in a wide band for a few years now unless or until they crack self driving or start selling general AI capabilities to third parties. What was clear from phase 1 of their story is that the market is really really slow to understand disruption and the same will be true again if they succeed with the next phase.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747

    Boris needs a dead cat explosive new revelation from Harry to take this off the front pages

    Get the Sec Def to say something about UFOs on GMTV.
  • NemtynakhtNemtynakht Posts: 2,329
    stodge said:

    No-one cares about what Cummings has to say.

    Next.

    I imagine those supportive of the Prime Minister will be hoping it was that easy but Cummings's comments can't be so easily dismissed because we know he was at the very centre of events.

    Hancock was finished before this if I'm being honest - he has some serious questions to answer about the way the virus was allowed to spread through care homes and some of the failures of "test and trace" and PPE supply should end up directly with him.

    It was interesting both Sunak and Raab came out very well and you just wonder if there's a post-Johnson Government starting to take shape - Sunak as PM, Raab as FS and Truss as Chancellor (perhaps). For some people, the very incarnation of the phrase "dream team", for others less so.

    As for Johnson, this adds to a cumulative effect which his most ardent supporters will readily dismiss because the man can do no wrong in their eyes. For others, it's a drip-drip of stories which start to raise questions about competence and judgement and once the seeds of doubt are sown, they can quickly germinate in the right atmosphere.

    Carrie Symonds also comes out of this poorly or rather Cummings portrays her more as a distraction than Lady Macbeth but the inference her priorities and wishes were of more import to the Prime Minister than those of the country will resonate. Sometimes, at times of crisis, it's easier to deal with the trivial than with the serious which appears impervious to resolution but that's not how some will see it.

    Does Cummings see a "return" as Adviser at the court of King Rishi? I suspect he will never have the influence he once enjoyed and I struggle to really understand what it is Cummings wants or understands. He has a view of the function of Government which isn't that practical and is perhaps one of those who can't cope without having a war to fight or a Goliath to slay.
    There is a grand total of O comments on my Facebook feed, even from the normally vocal labour types. Little impact - there have been more comments about receiving the vaccine.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
    Normal inflation or more funny money assst price inflation?

    I’m not sure, something like 7-10 years if it goes right. Probably it range trades in a wide band for a few years now unless or until they crack self driving or start selling general AI capabilities to third parties. What was clear from phase 1 of their story is that the market is really really slow to understand disruption and the same will be true again if they succeed with the next phase.
    Teslas efforts in self driving are shit.

    If other firms start buying it I'm keeping off the roads.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
    Normal inflation or more funny money assst price inflation?

    I’m not sure, something like 7-10 years if it goes right. Probably it range trades in a wide band for a few years now unless or until they crack self driving or start selling general AI capabilities to third parties. What was clear from phase 1 of their story is that the market is really really slow to understand disruption and the same will be true again if they succeed with the next phase.
    Look: I was a Fund Manager for a decade, and my strategy was all about picking winners (Netflix, Amazon, Google, FB, Apple, etc.) and owning them for a very long time.

    I have no doubt that Tesla is a major winner from electric vehicles *and* that they will also make successes in other areas.

    But I also know that autos is a very different space to those others: for a start, governments don't subsidise local social media companies. The reality is that a domestic auto insurance industry (with domestic producers) is a priority for many governments around the world, and they will offer massive subsidies and cheap capital to keep employment up. That makes it a fundamentally lower return business - because your margins are capped by subsidies to competitors - than an Apple or a Facebook.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,585
    kle4 said:
    Sales training 101.

    Which is yet another reason why the UK vaccination rates are way higher than pretty much anywhere else on Earth.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    edited May 2021
    Damn, I should have booked my vaccination when the nearest centre was 9.6 miles away, since then the only bookings have been further and further away every time I check - currently 31 miles is as near as can be managed.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874
    rcs1000 said:


    But the people shouting "racist" would never have voted for Boris.

    I the explanation is simpler: Boris Johnson wants London to be the world capital. He has a pretty Londonocentric view. He wants everyone who's anyone to have a home here, and to want to live here. And - while it sucks for Brits wanting affordable housing in the capital - this strategy has brought in a lot of tax and business into the UK.

    But making London the centre of the world meant leaving the borders open. If you couldn't get to and from London, why would you want to live there?

    There's no doubt in my mind for all the attempts to stir up the pointless Culture War, the decision not to close the borders was primarily economic.

    For all the "good result" NZ has got from Covid in terms of cases and deaths, the economic impact of closing the country to tourism has been disastrous, Put simply, there aren't enough New Zealanders "staycationing" to keep those parts of the economy dependent on tourism going.

    The other thought is by the time we closed the borders it was already too late. That's not to say the borders couldn't and shouldn't have been closed later but the truth is not even NZ is closed to Kiwis. As an NZ resident, Mrs Stodge is able to go back any time - as long as she quarantines for 14 days at a cost of £1500. My suspicion is the number of potential UK passport holders was too large to enable a similar quarantine network to be effective and it's not proven effective in NZ either.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    A reminder about how shit Tesla's effort in self driving are.

    Musk was promising door to door LAX to NYC self driving by 2017.

    What they have actually delivered is driver assist.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,594
    Carnyx said:

    Though something new I've discovered today is that things might be a bit worrying covid wise in Scotland.

    The number in hospital has increased from 70 to 97 during the last week and from a low point of 58 in early May.

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Cases have also increased:

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

    Nothing to panic about yet but it does explain why Nicola and Devi have lost their enthusiasm for zero covid ideas.


    The vast majority is in [edit] parts of greater Glasgow. Which is interesting in view of recent events there, though Glasgow was usually something of a focal point.

    Rather low levels elsewhere, and the only two other foci are small local authorities so it might be a statistical effect.
    Certainly but the increase in infections and hospitalisations in Scotland started earlier and has been greater than elsewhere.

    Now there might be reasons for that - a lower starting position and less acquired immunity perhaps.

    Scotland also does proportionally much less testing than England so its possible that the Indian variant seeded itself deeper before being discovered.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,874
    To paraphrase Lyndon Baines Johnson

    I have not sought nor shall I accept an earlier second vaccination.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,191
    kle4 said:

    Damn, I should have booked my vaccination when the nearest centre was 9.6 miles away, since then the only bookings have been further and further away every time I check - currently 31 miles is as near as can be managed.

    Which one are you on, and how long has it been between doses ?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Alistair said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
    Normal inflation or more funny money assst price inflation?

    I’m not sure, something like 7-10 years if it goes right. Probably it range trades in a wide band for a few years now unless or until they crack self driving or start selling general AI capabilities to third parties. What was clear from phase 1 of their story is that the market is really really slow to understand disruption and the same will be true again if they succeed with the next phase.
    Teslas efforts in self driving are shit.

    If other firms start buying it I'm keeping off the roads.
    I wasn’t referring to self driving, I think in a decade there’s a reasonably good chance they’re seen as an AI and robotics company.

    I think it far more likely than not they if self driving is generally available in 2030 than Tesla will have a monopoly on it. I don’t know what odds I give to them solving it by then, better than 50-50 I guess.

    I don’t have high confidence on this next phase because it’s far less easy to understand than the car business was. I had something like 90% certainty on that and hence went balls to the wall.

    No more half a years pay down for me. Just some of my uncashed profit which I’ll now leave there for years before checking the MTM again.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    Alistair said:

    A reminder about how shit Tesla's effort in self driving are.

    Musk was promising door to door LAX to NYC self driving by 2017.

    What they have actually delivered is driver assist.

    Current reviews are that GM's Super Cruise is better than Tesla Auto Pilot:

    https://www.motortrend.com/cars/cadillac/escalade/2021/cadillac-super-cruise-is-as-good-or-better-than-tesla-autopilot/

    https://www.businessinsider.com/how-tesla-autopilot-compares-to-cadillac-super-cruise-2017-10

    https://mashable.com/article/general-motors-super-cruise-versus-tesla-autopilot/

    And, by the way, I didn't cherry pick them. Those are the top three links on Google for Super Cruise vs Auto pilot.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Pulpstar said:

    kle4 said:

    Damn, I should have booked my vaccination when the nearest centre was 9.6 miles away, since then the only bookings have been further and further away every time I check - currently 31 miles is as near as can be managed.

    Which one are you on, and how long has it been between doses ?
    I've haven't booked my first yet.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,175
    Come on the Yellow Submarines!
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    moonshine said:

    Alistair said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
    Normal inflation or more funny money assst price inflation?

    I’m not sure, something like 7-10 years if it goes right. Probably it range trades in a wide band for a few years now unless or until they crack self driving or start selling general AI capabilities to third parties. What was clear from phase 1 of their story is that the market is really really slow to understand disruption and the same will be true again if they succeed with the next phase.
    Teslas efforts in self driving are shit.

    If other firms start buying it I'm keeping off the roads.
    I wasn’t referring to self driving, I think in a decade there’s a reasonably good chance they’re seen as an AI and robotics company.

    I think it far more likely than not they if self driving is generally available in 2030 than Tesla will have a monopoly on it. I don’t know what odds I give to them solving it by then, better than 50-50 I guess.

    I don’t have high confidence on this next phase because it’s far less easy to understand than the car business was. I had something like 90% certainty on that and hence went balls to the wall.

    No more half a years pay down for me. Just some of my uncashed profit which I’ll now leave there for years before checking the MTM again.
    The problem with that theory is that (1) the only evidence that Tesla is a ML/AI company is its self driving efforts, and (2) its self driving efforts today are not as good as Waymo/Mobile Eye or GM.

    So, you're taking a massive leap to say that they are going to go from being a B2C auto company, to being a B2B seller of ML and AI technology.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,594
    stodge said:

    rcs1000 said:


    But the people shouting "racist" would never have voted for Boris.

    I the explanation is simpler: Boris Johnson wants London to be the world capital. He has a pretty Londonocentric view. He wants everyone who's anyone to have a home here, and to want to live here. And - while it sucks for Brits wanting affordable housing in the capital - this strategy has brought in a lot of tax and business into the UK.

    But making London the centre of the world meant leaving the borders open. If you couldn't get to and from London, why would you want to live there?

    There's no doubt in my mind for all the attempts to stir up the pointless Culture War, the decision not to close the borders was primarily economic.

    For all the "good result" NZ has got from Covid in terms of cases and deaths, the economic impact of closing the country to tourism has been disastrous, Put simply, there aren't enough New Zealanders "staycationing" to keep those parts of the economy dependent on tourism going.

    The other thought is by the time we closed the borders it was already too late. That's not to say the borders couldn't and shouldn't have been closed later but the truth is not even NZ is closed to Kiwis. As an NZ resident, Mrs Stodge is able to go back any time - as long as she quarantines for 14 days at a cost of £1500. My suspicion is the number of potential UK passport holders was too large to enable a similar quarantine network to be effective and it's not proven effective in NZ either.
    Its a somewhat different situation in the UK as we run a huge tourism deficit normally.

    I suspect Boris yearns easy popularity and doesn't like saying 'no' to people.

    So was (and still is re Portugal) far too relaxed about people taking foreign holidays and then far too slow to bring in restrictions.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    The greatest trick many companies have managed is to make share purchasers believe they are not a thing maker or deliverer when they are in fact a thing maker or deliver.

    Tesla is a thing maker.
    Uber is a thing deliverer

    Both have managed to convince investors that they are software companies with the implied margin to match.

    It truly is impressive and also shows that rich people have too much money and should be taxed and keep being taxed until they develop some common sense.


    That Tesla do make things makes Musk more interesting to me (as well as him being seemingly a bit odd) compared to mere tech king super rich folk. Don't know why.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153
    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,647
    Johnson really is "Britain Trump" isn't he? Right down to poor judgement in employing staff.

    Though Trump ran Biden quite close even though the revelations were even more astonishing against him. Johnson will shrug this off, but I think we have had a glimpse of the toxic incompetence at the top of our government. It is hard to see it ending well, but I think the farce has some way to go yet.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    Though that's only putting the value on the car element of the business.

    Tesla are leading the world in battery development technology which could end up being a key factor for power generation and storage in countries worldwide. Which if that does happen is a very nice secondary business to get value from too.

    If countries like Australia end up going for Solar+Batteries for power generation and countries like the UK end up going for Wind+Batteries then there's going to be value in the battery section of the business, which wouldn't be in the equity of General Motors.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    JBriskin3 said:

    CD13 said:

    I'm not sure what Dominic gains from this? We thought last year that he was a nasty little b*stard and now he shows that's true. Is he telling the full truth? Two words ... "Barnard Castle."

    Mind you, wee Jimmy showed the same thing with poor old Salmond's mangling.

    Like watching France versus Wales at rugby. You want them both to lose.

    Definite loser today is Sunak.

    Tory MPs now think Cummings will be back in Downing Street if Sunak becomes PM.
    Rishi is a billionaire ain't he? Have we ever had a billionaire PM before?
    He's not a billionaire, his wife is a multi millionaire because her father is a billionaire.

    Because of the time value of money we're not likely to have ever had a billionaire as PM.

    I'm trying to think, relatively speaking, the richest PM we've ever had.

    Thatcher was quite wealthy thanks to her husband's business interests.

    Going back further it might be the Earl of Derby who was worth £7 million back in the 19th century, which must be worth £500 million in today's money?
    From my little black book:

    (Methodology based on % of national net income). Author Philip Beresford

    Thomas Beckett - effective PM - £24bn
    Cardinal Wolsey - £11bn
    Sir Robert Peel - £5bn
    Marquess of Rockingham - £4bn
    Duke of Newcastle - £3.4bn

    (My list ends at £2.5bn)

  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    ydoethur said:

    JBriskin3 said:

    CD13 said:

    I'm not sure what Dominic gains from this? We thought last year that he was a nasty little b*stard and now he shows that's true. Is he telling the full truth? Two words ... "Barnard Castle."

    Mind you, wee Jimmy showed the same thing with poor old Salmond's mangling.

    Like watching France versus Wales at rugby. You want them both to lose.

    Definite loser today is Sunak.

    Tory MPs now think Cummings will be back in Downing Street if Sunak becomes PM.
    Rishi is a billionaire ain't he? Have we ever had a billionaire PM before?
    I wonder if he would, in relative terms, be richer than the current record holder, the 14th Earl of Derby who was worth around £7 million at his death in 1869, but that’s not a billion.
    Newcastle and Rockingham were both richer although they were only First Lord of the Treasury
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Foxy said:

    Johnson really is "Britain Trump" isn't he? Right down to poor judgement in employing staff.

    Though Trump ran Biden quite close even though the revelations were even more astonishing against him. Johnson will shrug this off, but I think we have had a glimpse of the toxic incompetence at the top of our government. It is hard to see it ending well, but I think the farce has some way to go yet.

    I don't think poor judgement in employing staff is a major part of what I think of when I think of Trump. The sheer force of his odious (to opponents) personality kind of overwhelms issues around him being shit at picking team members or anything else.

    There aren't no similarities between the two, but Covid in particular has shown how they can also operate quite differently in important ways, and be awful in different ways too. And 'being incompetent' is itself too common a charactertistic to be kept to just Trumps and the Trump like.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,310
    This is an open goal for Labour. Can they make the "unfit for office" label stick to Johnson.

    Anyone who understands anything about leadership can see this to be true as plain as a pikestaff. The problem is that the public in general like having a celebrity for PM and either do not see or choose to overlook his obvious weaknesses. Then there are those that are just plain gullible.

    The essential problem is that Cummings is essentially dislikeable. Those that want Johnson gone for the good of the country need to think how the label will stick in the public perception in spite of it coming from Cummings
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,802
    edited May 2021
    rcs1000 said:

    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.

    The roof tiles interest me the most. Were I to replace the roof on my house I'd definitely go for them. I also think products like that should become the baseline for new builds.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Alistair said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.
    It is on the cheap end of the range at $580. But yes, the days of it being the most obvious screaming buy of our lives is gone. As recently as two years ago if you were paying attention, you knew it was a ten bagger from the car business alone, with a free option on the speculative self driving business working.

    I still think there’s a good chance it’s a ten bagger again from here but that does require some optimism about the rest of their business activities.
    Ten bagger from here?

    Over what time horizon? Because inflation will make a lot of things look like ten baggers.
    Normal inflation or more funny money assst price inflation?

    I’m not sure, something like 7-10 years if it goes right. Probably it range trades in a wide band for a few years now unless or until they crack self driving or start selling general AI capabilities to third parties. What was clear from phase 1 of their story is that the market is really really slow to understand disruption and the same will be true again if they succeed with the next phase.
    Teslas efforts in self driving are shit.

    If other firms start buying it I'm keeping off the roads.
    I wasn’t referring to self driving, I think in a decade there’s a reasonably good chance they’re seen as an AI and robotics company.

    I think it far more likely than not they if self driving is generally available in 2030 than Tesla will have a monopoly on it. I don’t know what odds I give to them solving it by then, better than 50-50 I guess.

    I don’t have high confidence on this next phase because it’s far less easy to understand than the car business was. I had something like 90% certainty on that and hence went balls to the wall.

    No more half a years pay down for me. Just some of my uncashed profit which I’ll now leave there for years before checking the MTM again.
    The problem with that theory is that (1) the only evidence that Tesla is a ML/AI company is its self driving efforts, and (2) its self driving efforts today are not as good as Waymo/Mobile Eye or GM.

    So, you're taking a massive leap to say that they are going to go from being a B2C auto company, to being a B2B seller of ML and AI technology.
    Yes it does require a leap. I don’t have high confidence, it’s a hunch that I’m prepared to back with a reasonable portion of my prior profits.

    It is not like the slam dunk Tesla trade of the last decade, or the big market short in Feb 2020. Both of which I put as much cash on as I could find (the latter with options). Oh for another racing certainty like those two.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.

    The roof tiles interest me the most. Were I to replace the roof on my house I'd definitely go for them. I also think products like that should become the baseline for new builds.
    Interested to see how this turns out rcs. Seems like such a hard product to profitably scale.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,310
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.

    The roof tiles interest me the most. Were I to replace the roof on my house I'd definitely go for them. I also think products like that should become the baseline for new builds.
    Interesting. I had heard there was a long waiting list and no sign of delivery. If they work they do indeed look very promising
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,385
    edited May 2021
    Charles said:

    JBriskin3 said:

    CD13 said:

    I'm not sure what Dominic gains from this? We thought last year that he was a nasty little b*stard and now he shows that's true. Is he telling the full truth? Two words ... "Barnard Castle."

    Mind you, wee Jimmy showed the same thing with poor old Salmond's mangling.

    Like watching France versus Wales at rugby. You want them both to lose.

    Definite loser today is Sunak.

    Tory MPs now think Cummings will be back in Downing Street if Sunak becomes PM.
    Rishi is a billionaire ain't he? Have we ever had a billionaire PM before?
    He's not a billionaire, his wife is a multi millionaire because her father is a billionaire.

    Because of the time value of money we're not likely to have ever had a billionaire as PM.

    I'm trying to think, relatively speaking, the richest PM we've ever had.

    Thatcher was quite wealthy thanks to her husband's business interests.

    Going back further it might be the Earl of Derby who was worth £7 million back in the 19th century, which must be worth £500 million in today's money?
    From my little black book:

    (Methodology based on % of national net income). Author Philip Beresford

    Thomas Beckett - effective PM - £24bn
    Cardinal Wolsey - £11bn
    Sir Robert Peel - £5bn
    Marquess of Rockingham - £4bn
    Duke of Newcastle - £3.4bn

    (My list ends at £2.5bn)

    If Measuring Worth is correct, Derby would have been worth £15.3 billion on that basis, so ahead of Newcastle and Rockingham. I’m confident he was richer than Peel. He had massive cotton interests and owned most of Lancashire.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:
    Sales training 101.

    Which is yet another reason why the UK vaccination rates are way higher than pretty much anywhere else on Earth.
    Britain's certainly somewhere close to the top, especially if one discounts the vanguard of high-achieving microstates and territories (although many of those are also UK dependencies of one kind or another.) The top 20:

    Gibraltar: 226.14 vaccinations per 100 people (I can only assume that the Gibraltarian total includes a lot of incoming Spanish workers)
    Seychelles: 134.39
    Falkland Islands: 126.53
    United Arab Emirates: 125.53
    San Marino: 125.07
    Israel: 122.10
    Cayman Islands: 119.63
    Saint Helena: 116.80
    Malta: 111.09
    Bermuda: 110.52
    Aruba: 104.26
    Isle of Man: 101.10
    Jersey: 98.68
    Bahrain: 95.28
    Guernsey: 91.96
    Chile: 91.79
    United Kingdom: 91.32
    Curacao: 89.55
    Anguilla: 88.22
    United States: 86.05

    And for comparison:

    Hungary: 85.26
    Canada: 57.33
    Germany: 54.98
    EU Average: 51.37
    France: 49.85
    Brazil: 29.99
    Australia: 14.47
    India: 14.17
    Pakistan: 2.43
    Taiwan: 1.34
    Nigeria: 0.94
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    edited May 2021
    dixiedean said:

    kle4 said:
    Strange how a lot of this wizardry of psychological nudging is no more nor less than the ability to convey a message in a simple, polite manner.
    It might be true, but such deep analysis of behaviours makes me a little uncomfortable. When they use it in work contexts around personality types and how to adjust for different ones it comes across like integration training for sociopaths.

    Be nice and polite and things go easier is perhaps a more human way of summarising the nudging point, though doesn't capture all the elements.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rcs1000 said:

    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.

    BiB: This is the point I was making regarding calculations of Tesla stock comparing with traditional car manufacturers.

    Tesla are more than just a car manufacturer. How much revenue and potential future revenue growth does this section of the business have in it?

    Plus you're also investing in Musk somewhat. Any future spin-off Tesla (but not SpaceX or other businesses) potential like solar roof and batteries will be included in your stock too.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,310

    stodge said:

    rcs1000 said:


    But the people shouting "racist" would never have voted for Boris.

    I the explanation is simpler: Boris Johnson wants London to be the world capital. He has a pretty Londonocentric view. He wants everyone who's anyone to have a home here, and to want to live here. And - while it sucks for Brits wanting affordable housing in the capital - this strategy has brought in a lot of tax and business into the UK.

    But making London the centre of the world meant leaving the borders open. If you couldn't get to and from London, why would you want to live there?

    There's no doubt in my mind for all the attempts to stir up the pointless Culture War, the decision not to close the borders was primarily economic.

    For all the "good result" NZ has got from Covid in terms of cases and deaths, the economic impact of closing the country to tourism has been disastrous, Put simply, there aren't enough New Zealanders "staycationing" to keep those parts of the economy dependent on tourism going.

    The other thought is by the time we closed the borders it was already too late. That's not to say the borders couldn't and shouldn't have been closed later but the truth is not even NZ is closed to Kiwis. As an NZ resident, Mrs Stodge is able to go back any time - as long as she quarantines for 14 days at a cost of £1500. My suspicion is the number of potential UK passport holders was too large to enable a similar quarantine network to be effective and it's not proven effective in NZ either.
    Its a somewhat different situation in the UK as we run a huge tourism deficit normally.

    I suspect Boris yearns easy popularity and doesn't like saying 'no' to people.

    So was (and still is re Portugal) far too relaxed about people taking foreign holidays and then far too slow to bring in restrictions.
    Yes indeed. Apparently there are a load of Manchester United fans engaging in "essential travel" to see a football match as we speak. The restrictions on travel have been a joke.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.

    Tesla are leading the world in battery development technology which could end up being a key factor for power generation and storage in countries worldwide. Which if that does happen is a very nice secondary business to get value from too.

    Tesla are currently packaging up other people's technology, Panasonic's, when it comes to batteries.

    We'll see how their branching out into cell creation goes.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,802

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.

    The roof tiles interest me the most. Were I to replace the roof on my house I'd definitely go for them. I also think products like that should become the baseline for new builds.
    Interesting. I had heard there was a long waiting list and no sign of delivery. If they work they do indeed look very promising
    Yes, interest is very high as they're a no brainer for people living south of Cambridge. I don't think the product will become readily available here for another 3-5 years realistically. There's potentially a huge gap there for a UK based competitor to steal a march on Tesla, especially with the EU trade deal now sealed with no tariffs and quotas a company that makes it work and is able to scale could quickly become very successful.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,485
    stodge said:

    To paraphrase Lyndon Baines Johnson

    I have not sought nor shall I accept an earlier second vaccination.

    Why not? I advanced mine three weeks just by going on the NHS ‘manage your booking’ site. Took about two minutes.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,561

    The richest person to become British Prime Minister was Edward Stanley the 14th Earl of Derby (1799-1869) who had a personal fortune in excess of £7 million (about £444 million in today's terms).

    https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/richest-british-prime-minister

    But if it was £7m substantially in property - what would THAT be worth now?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    Sandpit said:

    kle4 said:

    Amazing random stat - apparently Elon Musk was worth $27bn at the start of 2020, and his net worth was $185bn by the start of 2021 (though it fluctuates a lot month to month). That's downright insane. Even Bezos's wealth didn't rise that steeply in a single year.

    Tesla share price went totally bonkers last year, it’s not possibly sustainable now that every other manufacturer is playing the same game.
    It’s not really just a car company but even if you assume it was, the valuation today is on the cheap end.
    That's simply not true.

    Let's make some assumptions shall we.

    Let's assume that the car market in 2035 is 95% electric. Fair?

    Let's assume that Tesla is 20% of the electric car market in 2035. Which is aggressive. But not ridiculous.

    Let's also assume that Tesla's average sale price in 2035 is $60,000. Which is also aggressive, but not ridiculous.

    Now for the big difficult question: what's Tesla's net (after tax) profit margin?

    I'm going to go with 9%. Which is not as high as Porsche today (9.8%), but is substantially higher than any other auto maker. (Bear in mind also that because Tesla is vertically integrated, it contains more low margin elements than a traditional auto maker.)

    We then need to discount back to get the right share price today. And I'm going to use 9% for my discount rate.

    That gets you - once you remember to use the proper number of shares in issue - to a price of $680 today.

    Now, you can argue that one or more of my assumptions it too bullish or bearish. But this is a bet that Tesla is by far the dominant auto maker worldwide in 2035, which a share TWICE what the largest auto maker today has, and with a margin that is normally only achieved by luxury car makers, and with a pretty bullish average sales price.

    I personally wouldn't say that's particularly cheap.

    Tesla are leading the world in battery development technology which could end up being a key factor for power generation and storage in countries worldwide. Which if that does happen is a very nice secondary business to get value from too.

    Tesla are currently packaging up other people's technology, Panasonic's, when it comes to batteries.

    We'll see how their branching out into cell creation goes.
    Generally they’ve been using Samsung in stationary storage I think. This somewhat underplays the value-add in the pack architecture and autobidder software but one imagines that product will quickly commoditise. Of course when it comes to the EV battery packs, it’s hopelessly simplistic to say they’re just packaging someone else’s tech.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,153

    rcs1000 said:

    In case anyone wants to know whether I'm a fan of Tesla products, I would note that I bought the original Tesla Roadster in 2010* and was one of the first people in the UK to get a Tesla Model S in 2014. And I'm about to install Tesla solar roof and batteries here in LA.

    * One of only 31 people to do so.

    BiB: This is the point I was making regarding calculations of Tesla stock comparing with traditional car manufacturers.

    Tesla are more than just a car manufacturer. How much revenue and potential future revenue growth does this section of the business have in it?

    Plus you're also investing in Musk somewhat. Any future spin-off Tesla (but not SpaceX or other businesses) potential like solar roof and batteries will be included in your stock too.
    Yes, I agree. I think I'd be happy to say I'll attribute $50bn of value to stuff that Musk hasn't even thought of yet. Likewise $50bn (say) to Tesla's solar efforts.

    The problem is that Tesla is already one of the world's largest companies by market capitalisation. It's $600bn market cap puts it ninth in the world.

    The question is not do I think Tesla is an amazing company with amazing opportunities. I do think that. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were the dominant player in autos and in batteries and in solar in a decade's time.

    The problem is that its $600bn valuation already assumes it's going to achieve that.
This discussion has been closed.