politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » I’m not sure a Jeremy Corbyn led Labour Party is equipped t

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Topping, ah. We were taught to huge our knees to our chest to float whilst conserving heat.

King Cole, nobody's perfect.

I’m close though. Ask my wife.

Absolutely brilliant pun by the guys and gals at YouGov

@chris__curtis: YouGov's full polling on Corbyn's Branson Pickle #TrainGate

https://twitter.com/chris__curtis/status/768745828768972800

So there we have it, Corbyn's less honest/popular than a train operating, Corbyn truly is awesome.

OldKingCole said:

John_M said:

OldKingCole said:

MaxPB said:

Sandpit said:

MaxPB said:

The rise in immigration from Romania and Bulgaria is quite shocking. Those two countries alone account for 26% migration from the EU, compared to 25% for the A8 nations.

Wouldn't you if you were from Romania or Bulgaria?
I was in Bucharest last year on a weekender, pretty much all the hotel and bar staff there were speaking good English and saving like mad to get to London. Their wages were something like €100 a month in Romania.

I don't think the wages are that bad, it's more like a €100 per week iirc! I agree with you though, I went to Romania recently as well all the waitresses are very pretty and speak English, service with a smile is expected and they seemed quite happy to me. I spoke to one waitress who asked me what London was like, I gave her the no holds-barred version of it being expensive and the minimum wage being tough to live on, but she was a student and didn't want to be a waitress forever and was interested in working for some kind of art stuff which is why she wanted to come. Apparently the opportunities for the arts in Romania are very limited so a year or so of working as a waitress in order to find an opportunity in London in her chosen field was worth it. She also knew that she'd end up living with five or six other girls in a two bedroom flat because her friends have already left for London, it didn't seem to bother her, but I noticed that they don't seem to bothered by a lack of personal space there.

It’s only relatively recently that we’ve had the amount of personal space in UK that we’ve had.

I dimly recall that families would be classed as homeless if kids had to share a bedroom. I sincerely hope that's an urban myth as it was routine for children of my generation.

There’ll be a Yorkshire person on here soon saying that in their youth there were 14 of them sharing a bed, and they had to take in turns to breathe!

Seriously though the scenes in programmes like Call the Midwife, showing Poplar in the 50’s weren’t untypical.

In the village where my paternal grandparents lived there was a popular story of one family where they put the children to bed in a rota and when they were asleep took them out and stacked them in the corner!

david_herdson said:

OldKingCole said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. M, to be fair, we do mention it sometimes here. It doesn't enter general political discourse, though.

King Cole, Yorkshireman. It's not the Four Yorkshire Persons.

I’m a lefty. Hence politically correct.

Yorkshirefolk is the non-gender-specific plural then.

Obliged.

weejonnie said:

Also, of course, fivethirtyeight.com is fairly accurate at producing predictions based on poll weighting and averaging - however by its nature it will NOT respond well to sudden changes (tipping points)

Handling sudden changes is exactly what it's designed for. Sometimes you get sudden changes because there's an actual sudden change, and sometimes you get them because of statistical noise. What these models are good at is working out the probability that it's one or the other.

Edit to add: What you tend to see is a couple of polls don't do much to it, but if they turn into a pattern then it'll move very quickly.

Black holes ... a question.

Light cannot escape because of the intense gravity. Yet light has no mass and shouldn't be affected by gravity. Ah, photons have kinetic energy which equals mass. But the photons are not moving because they're trapped by the gravity. Ah, but they must be travelling at the speed of light in a black hole which will be nil but ...

So is time passing for them?

Consider me to be Paddington Bear and explain accordingly, please. I suspect I've forgotten something very obvious. Oh and if relative time is non-existent to a photon does it pass in its own frame of reference?

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

The Guardian has a piece on the GCSE results. Armageddon, educationally, apparently.
First para reads:
"National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/gcse-results-dramatic-decline-grades)

I’m not sure that 2.1% can reasonably be described as a “dramatic fall"

OldKingCole said:

The Guardian has a piece on the GCSE results. Armageddon, educationally, apparently.
First para reads:
"National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/gcse-results-dramatic-decline-grades)

I’m not sure that 2.1% can reasonably be described as a “dramatic fall"

If you can describe a 0.1% rise in inflation as a 'dramatic spike' or 'jump', 2.1% is right up there in 'cataclysmic' or 'catastrophic' land. Journalists are over-emotional innumerates.

OldKingCole said:

The Guardian has a piece on the GCSE results. Armageddon, educationally, apparently.
First para reads:
"National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/gcse-results-dramatic-decline-grades)

I’m not sure that 2.1% can reasonably be described as a “dramatic fall"

According to the BBC, the "dramatic fall" is largely due to an increase in retakes of maths and English GCSEs, so not particularly significant.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Absolutely brilliant pun by the guys and gals at YouGov

@chris__curtis: YouGov's full polling on Corbyn's Branson Pickle #TrainGate

https://twitter.com/chris__curtis/status/768745828768972800

Lovely little payoff paragraph there too:

Remain voters were more likely to have sat in a reserved seat than leave voters, though it isn’t clear if this is because they are more likely to be seat thieves or just more likely to travel by train.

CD13 said:

Black holes ... a question.

Light cannot escape because of the intense gravity. Yet light has no mass and shouldn't be affected by gravity. Ah, photons have kinetic energy which equals mass. But the photons are not moving because they're trapped by the gravity. Ah, but they must be travelling at the speed of light in a black hole which will be nil but ...

So is time passing for them?

Consider me to be Paddington Bear and explain accordingly, please. I suspect I've forgotten something very obvious. Oh and if relative time is non-existent to a photon does it pass in its own frame of reference?

I think there are a number of misconceptions there but my physics is nowhere near good enough to put them right.

Light is definitely affected by gravity, and bends round black holes (which is the primary way of seeing them).

I'm not sure it's necessarily true to say that the photon's speed will be zero. It certainly won't be zero as it passes the event horizon or even just on the other side. After all, the energy the photon contains has to go *somewhere*.

John_M said:

If you can describe a 0.1% rise in inflation as a 'dramatic spike' or 'jump', 2.1% is right up there in 'cataclysmic' or 'catastrophic' land. Journalists are over-emotional innumerates.

Aye, there are a few good ones but the majority are as piss poor as you describe.

Sean_F said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

I could see it not being a problem if you have a country (like Ireland in the 1960's and 1970's) which has a huge natural increase in the population. I'm more puzzled that such an exodus hasn't adversely affected Eastern European countries which don't have this natural increase. As the emigrants tend to be younger than the population as a whole, you would expect that to hit growth.

I've not read him, but I wonder if Stiglitz's view is too simple? Emigrants don't usually leave and turn their backs on their home country forever. As well as sending money home while working, many return after a few years of seeking their fortune abroad, bringing back skills, expertise and attitude as well as their cash. Perhaps this mixing effect outweighs the temporary loss of their labour?

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

That is really counter-intuitive, but only fools argue with data. Have any explanations been offered as to why?

rcs1000 said:

Sean_F said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

I could see it not being a problem if you have a country (like Ireland in the 1960's and 1970's) which has a huge natural increase in the population. I'm more puzzled that such an exodus hasn't adversely affected Eastern European countries which don't have this natural increase. As the emigrants tend to be younger than the population as a whole, you would expect that to hit growth.

More than half of migrants return home within three years, though, which I think the key. They go with no skills and come back having learnt a lot.

bs, they come and go as they please taking coach trips.

Mr M,

Thanks. I was hoping for a non-mathematical explanation. I know that photons don't experience time so their 13.8 billions years pass in an instant. To be honest, I had my doubts about electromagnetic radiation even at school.

And as for Stephen (Black Hole) Hawking claiming that his analogy for time beginning at a point is like saying you can't go further South than the South Pole. Nope, you can drop off the Earth altogether. I prefer to think that C is a maximum otherwise we'd never be able to make sense of the universe. You could see a window break before the cricket ball was hit.

Perhaps time really is an illusion? Perhaps things do happen all at once.

AlastairMeeks said:

Casino_Royale said:

DecrepitJohnL said:

Charles said:

CarlottaVance said:

I'm trying to think of a LotO less suited to the role - and the only one who comes close is IDS.....serial rebel, imposed by the membership who felt he held the 'true faith'.....

Was IDS really this bad? It's a long time ago, but all I remember is IDS being a professional politician who simply wasn't very good at it.

Jeremy takes it to a whole other level. He's transcendently bad...

IDS did surprisingly well at the ballot box but was terrible at PMQs and a lousy speaker, not least because he'd clear his throat midway through almost every sentence. But it is propaganda of the victors to claim Michael Howard saved the party.

Modernisers hate to hear it but IDS played a major part in changing the Conservative Party's attitudes towards social justice and welfare reform.

You only have to compare Osborne's sneering at those on benefits, and eagerness for cutting it to the bone, compared to IDS's concern that universal credit wouldn't work without being properly funded to see the difference.

IDS main issue is that (although not stupid) he's never been quite clever enough to make a success of himself or his ideas.

If the Conservatives weren't supposed to cut defence spending and they weren't supposed to cut benefits, where were they supposed to make cuts? The other criticism routinely made by the paleo-right of George Osborne is that he didn't cut enough.

The magic money tree has branches on the right as well as the left.

Yes it does. The biggest spending areas are Health and Welfare I believe, and Defence possibly next but some way back? Health has been officially ring-fenced (although you wouldn't know it because, of course, it never has enough money and no reorganisation seems able to make it run more efficiently), and no matter how much chaff there is in other departments, or whole departments that are not needed, with a deficit as large as ours at some point you will need to cut into the area of largest expenditure in a much bigger way, or massively raise taxes.

No one is prepared to do either. They do enough to get by, and then the public get tired of it and as now austerity is abandoned. Until the next crisis.

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Sean_F said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

I could see it not being a problem if you have a country (like Ireland in the 1960's and 1970's) which has a huge natural increase in the population. I'm more puzzled that such an exodus hasn't adversely affected Eastern European countries which don't have this natural increase. As the emigrants tend to be younger than the population as a whole, you would expect that to hit growth.

I've not read him, but I wonder if Stiglitz's view is too simple? Emigrants don't usually leave and turn their backs on their home country forever. As well as sending money home while working, many return after a few years of seeking their fortune abroad, bringing back skills, expertise and attitude as well as their cash. Perhaps this mixing effect outweighs the temporary loss of their labour?

It's possible that high levels of net emigration are adversely affecting some Eastern European economies, but this is more than offset by the beneficial economic impact of the reforms that followed the end of communism.

Where these reforms haven't occurred (eg the Ukraine) there seems little doubt that high levels of emigration have weakened the country.

John_M said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

That is really counter-intuitive, but only fools argue with data. Have any explanations been offered as to why?

There are quite a lot, however the ones I find most persuasive are:

1. Temporary migrants come back better skilled. The best example I can think of is a former Resolver Systems employee from Krakow, who came to London, learnt a lot about selling technology to hedge funds, and then returned to Poland to set up a shop selling development into the City from Poland.

2. The departure of migrants pushes up wages for those who remain. (Simulatenously, it presumably pushes down the cost of housing.) So, those who remain are better paid and can spend more of it.

3. Those who are away remit money back home, boosting the effective domestic savings rate.

AlastairMeeks said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

From today's Red Box email

And scientists have detected what they think could be a "second Earth", after using the latest technology to look deep into space and picking up faint audio waves from light years away of another life form laughing at the mess the Labour Party is in.

What would they be laughing at that Labour was doing in early 2012?

AlastairMeeks said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

From today's Red Box email

And scientists have detected what they think could be a "second Earth", after using the latest technology to look deep into space and picking up faint audio waves from light years away of another life form laughing at the mess the Labour Party is in.

What would they be laughing at that Labour was doing in early 2012?

Pedant alert: if we heard about it, strictly speaking they would be laughing about what Labour was doing in 2008.

Which probably means they'd be laughing about Gordon Brown and the Glasgow East by-election.

O/T:

Hail showers forecast in Sydney tomorrow. Must be unusual.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2147714?day=1

AndyJS said:

NickPalmer said:

Watched the clip, thought the start was a bit uncomfortable but basically came away with two points: (1) he wanted to talk about the NHS and journalists wanted to talk trivia (2) he has a case on the train incident that I can't be bothered to assess. Net effect is to make me even more favourable. I'm more concerned about the Sanders cockup, which shouldn't have gone unchecked.

Now, I'm a sympathiser so you'd expect that reaction to the clip. But two points:

- Anecdotally, two emails from non-Labour ex-constituents have come in saying that they think there is an overcrowding problem, they're glad Corbyn raised it, and the media coverage is just irritating.

- I honestly don't think that either PB leader writers or the mainstream media get why Corbyn is popular with those who like him, and in many cases (cf Ganesh) they've given up even trying. This affects punting (by making people bet on a misunderstanding) and it affects predicting what the party will do.

A distinction is needed between being widely seen as not up to being PM and not having a strong supporter base. The problem with Owen's challenge is that he may fail on both counts.

I think the whole TrainGate thing is being slightly blown out of proportion. Most people won't remember it in a few months' time.

Very few people will have said otherwise, or denied it is in most ways trivial. Nevertheless, whether it hits his support or not Jeremy lied in order to make a point, and did so unnecessarily as it was an easy point to make without the lie. Him getting shirty about journalists asking about his lie instead of his own agenda will indeed probably play well with his supporters, but it still speaks poorly of him, and is him blaming them for his own mistake.

The press, particualrly when as hostile to him as it is, will seek out stories to hound him. BUt it is still his fault if he feeds them meat himself, and he cannot whinge about getting bite marks.

"Jeremy Corbyn was unreachable on Tuesday afternoon during the 'traingate' row because he was making jam, according to reports."

That clears up where the "jam" in "jam-packed" disappeared to.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/25/aides-unable-to-reach-jeremy-corbyn-during-traingate-row-because/

AndyJS said:

O/T:

Hail showers forecast in Sydney tomorrow. Must be unusual.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2147714?day=1

Don't think hail is unusual for mid winter?

John_M said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

That is really counter-intuitive, but only fools argue with data. Have any explanations been offered as to why?

People returning with skills acquired overseas.

Sean_F said:

rcs1000 said:

Sean_F said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.


The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

I could see it not being a problem if you have a country (like Ireland in the 1960's and 1970's) which has a huge natural increase in the population. I'm more puzzled that such an exodus hasn't adversely affected Eastern European countries which don't have this natural increase. As the emigrants tend to be younger than the population as a whole, you would expect that to hit growth.

More than half of migrants return home within three years, though, which I think the key. They go with no skills and come back having learnt a lot.

Many Eastern Europeans, especially Poles, do seem to have settled more or less permanently in the UK (that may not be true of other countries). That would be of concern to me if I were a member of an Eastern European government.

Yes and no.

It also rids then of a domestic youth unemployment problem, albeit in Poland the economy seems in pretty good shape in general.

They are very keen on free movement.

kle4 said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Casino_Royale said:

DecrepitJohnL said:

Charles said:

CarlottaVance said:

I'm trying to think of a LotO less suited to the role - and the only one who comes close is IDS.....serial rebel, imposed by the membership who felt he held the 'true faith'.....

Was IDS really this bad? It's a long time ago, but all I remember is IDS being a professional politician who simply wasn't very good at it.

Jeremy takes it to a whole other level. He's transcendently bad...

IDS did surprisingly well at the ballot box but was terrible at PMQs and a lousy speaker, not least because he'd clear his throat midway through almost every sentence. But it is propaganda of the victors to claim Michael Howard saved the party.

Modernisers hate to hear it but IDS played a major part in changing the Conservative Party's attitudes towards social justice and welfare reform.

You only have to compare Osborne's sneering at those on benefits, and eagerness for cutting it to the bone, compared to IDS's concern that universal credit wouldn't work without being properly funded to see the difference.

IDS main issue is that (although not stupid) he's never been quite clever enough to make a success of himself or his ideas.

If the Conservatives weren't supposed to cut defence spending and they weren't supposed to cut benefits, where were they supposed to make cuts? The other criticism routinely made by the paleo-right of George Osborne is that he didn't cut enough.

The magic money tree has branches on the right as well as the left.

Yes it does. The biggest spending areas are Health and Welfare I believe, and Defence possibly next but some way back? Health has been officially ring-fenced (although you wouldn't know it because, of course, it never has enough money and no reorganisation seems able to make it run more efficiently), and no matter how much chaff there is in other departments, or whole departments that are not needed, with a deficit as large as ours at some point you will need to cut into the area of largest expenditure in a much bigger way, or massively raise taxes.

No one is prepared to do either. They do enough to get by, and then the public get tired of it and as now austerity is abandoned. Until the next crisis.

Health and pensions (basically the core of the state for the retired) is what has been heavily protected at the expense of virtually everything else.

I think that's a social-economic mistake but politically the reasons are obvious.

OldKingCole said:

The Guardian has a piece on the GCSE results. Armageddon, educationally, apparently.
First para reads:
"National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/gcse-results-dramatic-decline-grades)

I’m not sure that 2.1% can reasonably be described as a “dramatic fall"

Most interesting is this, how is this when poverty is supposed to be the biggest factor in determining how well a student does?

"In England alone the A*-C pass rate dropped from 68.8% in 2015 to 66.6%.

Northern Ireland – where education is dominated by grammar schools, the subject of debate in England – bucked the national trend with a rise in A*s and As as well as a rise in the headline pass rate to 79.1%."

nunu said:

OldKingCole said:

The Guardian has a piece on the GCSE results. Armageddon, educationally, apparently.
First para reads:
"National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/gcse-results-dramatic-decline-grades)

I’m not sure that 2.1% can reasonably be described as a “dramatic fall"

Most interesting is this, how is this when poverty is supposed to be the biggest factor in determining how well a student does?

"In England alone the A*-C pass rate dropped from 68.8% in 2015 to 66.6%.

Northern Ireland – where education is dominated by grammar schools, the subject of debate in England – bucked the national trend with a rise in A*s and As as well as a rise in the headline pass rate to 79.1%."

nunu said:

OldKingCole said:

The Guardian has a piece on the GCSE results. Armageddon, educationally, apparently.
First para reads:
"National GCSE results have fallen dramatically across the board, with the proportion who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points compared with last year – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/gcse-results-dramatic-decline-grades)

I’m not sure that 2.1% can reasonably be described as a “dramatic fall"

Most interesting is this, how is this when poverty is supposed to be the biggest factor in determining how well a student does?

"In England alone the A*-C pass rate dropped from 68.8% in 2015 to 66.6%.

Northern Ireland – where education is dominated by grammar schools, the subject of debate in England – bucked the national trend with a rise in A*s and As as well as a rise in the headline pass rate to 79.1%."

Isn't Northern Ireland poorer than England in the round ?

CD13 said:

Mr Herdson,

"Light is definitely affected by gravity, and bends round black holes (which is the primary way of seeing them)."

Indeed the 1919 vindication of General Relativity. But the light is travelling at C then so has kinetic energy = mass, and red-shifting will mean it's less energetic. So in a Black Hole, is it doing laps? or is it a field of energy.

There will be a mathematical explanation which will mean b*gger all to me.

I always find it interesting to think what it would be like in a black hole. Presumably you would be dead as it would be impossible for the heart to pump the blood away from the hole (for example), but if you weren't then presumably your vision of the outside would be a highly blue-shifted fish-eye lens perspective.

Sean_F said:

OldKingCole said:

John_M said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.

We are incredibly selfish in this country. We argue endlessly about immigration, without much thought for the effect on source countries.

I'm sure there's some fancy phrase for the looting of human capital from less-developed countries, but it's ultimately a more subtle form of beggar-thy-neighbour.

As an aside, I think this is area where I think Stiglitz is actually completely wrong.

If he were right, countries which saw exoduses of their higher skilled citizens, would suffer lower GDP per capita growth in the subsequent decades. Departing population would lower economic growth, and create a negative feedback loop.

Unfortunately, the data on this tells exactly the opposite story. The European country with the largest exodus of higher educated citizens in the period 1965 to 1980 was Ireland. The country with the highest per capita GDP growth from 1980 to 1995 was... Ireland.

There's a similar story - on a lesser scale - in the UK. We had net emigration through to about 1985. Our going forward GDP per capita growth was excellent.

The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015.

That is really counter-intuitive, but only fools argue with data. Have any explanations been offered as to why?

While it is counter-intuitive, Western Europe largely prospered in the 19thC while experiencing fairly substantial emigtation to N America and Australasia (yes I know some of the migrants to Australia were involuntary!)

At the same time, though, these countries' populations were growing very rapidly, so emigration offered a safety valve.

It's an interesting counter-factual to consider what would have happened if France's population had grown like England's throughout the 19th century. France would now have 200-250m people, making the country a superpower.

It didn't of course because France had nothing like the same level of industrial revolution as England and was beset by political strife throughout much of the 19th C.

France in WWI was quite backward in many places, and had made only moderate progress by WWII (whilst acquiring a national culture of moral bankruptcy at the same time)

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

Time for my daily plug of Stiglitz. He doesn't confine himself to the Euro, he also gives a relatively rare non-UK take on freedom of movement.


The same is true more latterly of Eastern Europe: the countries with the greatest exoduses of people as a percentage of population (the Baltics, Poland), have been the ones with the fastest economic growth. Most recently, Spain saw its working age population shrink by 1.3m in the five years to September 2015. And it's now the fastest growing economy in Western Europe.

There are a lot of scholarly pieces looking at the effect of migration on places people have left, and the data is pretty unambigious. Working age people leaving doesn't lower the prospects for those who remain, in fact it has the opposite effect.

That is really counter-intuitive, but only fools argue with data. Have any explanations been offered as to why?

There are quite a lot, however the ones I find most persuasive are:

1. Temporary migrants come back better skilled. The best example I can think of is a former Resolver Systems employee from Krakow, who came to London, learnt a lot about selling technology to hedge funds, and then returned to Poland to set up a shop selling development into the City from Poland.

2. The departure of migrants pushes up wages for those who remain. (Simulatenously, it presumably pushes down the cost of housing.) So, those who remain are better paid and can spend more of it.

3. Those who are away remit money back home, boosting the effective domestic savings rate.

Interesting. I was suprised you Voted Leave, was there any data that convinced you to vote this way?

JosiasJessop said:

John_M said:

CD13 said:

Mr M,

Thanks. I was hoping for a non-mathematical explanation. I know that photons don't experience time so their 13.8 billions years pass in an instant. To be honest, I had my doubts about electromagnetic radiation even at school.

And as for Stephen (Black Hole) Hawking claiming that his analogy for time beginning at a point is like saying you can't go further South than the South Pole. Nope, you can drop off the Earth altogether. I prefer to think that C is a maximum otherwise we'd never be able to make sense of the universe. You could see a window break before the cricket ball was hit.

Perhaps time really is an illusion? Perhaps things do happen all at once.

"The Story of Your Life' by Ted Chiang is a lovely little novella about the nature of time and First Contact. It's been butchered into a film (Arrival) , but it still might be worth reading/watching.
(Snip)

The trailer for Arrival gave me goose bumps. I'm really looking forward to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g

I also like the fact that one of the places the aliens land is 'Devon, UK'

The story collection it comes from is well worth a read. I love Ted Chiang. He writes interesting and challenging stuff without descending into pseud's territory.

The novella is a genuinely touching yet haunting love story about two people who have yet to meet. I'll leave it at that.

John_M said:

JosiasJessop said:

John_M said:

CD13 said:

Mr M,

Thanks. I was hoping for a non-mathematical explanation. I know that photons don't experience time so their 13.8 billions years pass in an instant. To be honest, I had my doubts about electromagnetic radiation even at school.

And as for Stephen (Black Hole) Hawking claiming that his analogy for time beginning at a point is like saying you can't go further South than the South Pole. Nope, you can drop off the Earth altogether. I prefer to think that C is a maximum otherwise we'd never be able to make sense of the universe. You could see a window break before the cricket ball was hit.

Perhaps time really is an illusion? Perhaps things do happen all at once.

"The Story of Your Life' by Ted Chiang is a lovely little novella about the nature of time and First Contact. It's been butchered into a film (Arrival) , but it still might be worth reading/watching.
(Snip)

The trailer for Arrival gave me goose bumps. I'm really looking forward to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g

I also like the fact that one of the places the aliens land is 'Devon, UK'

The story collection it comes from is well worth a read. I love Ted Chiang. He writes interesting and challenging stuff without descending into pseud's territory.

The novella is a genuinely touching yet haunting love story about two people who have yet to meet. I'll leave it at that.

This one?
https://mathisgasser.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/ted-chiang_story-of-your-life_2000.pdf

I've not read it, but Mrs J has. She's a great sci-fi fan.

Mr. F, Corsican pig farmer - 0
British footwear designer - 2

For F1 fans out there. This weekend could be quite tasty excluding Mercedes. McLaren have spent 7 tokens on their PU, 3 on the ICE, 2 on the turbo and 2 on the compressor. They are also bringing a fuel and lubricant upgrade courtesy of Exxon. Rumours say that the fuel is worth 20hp and the PU upgrade is worth ~35hp, at Spa 7hp is worth a tenth of a second. The PU upgrade so far have brought 20hp worth of performance gains plus additional hybrid deployment. If these upgrades turn out to be genuine then it puts the Honda PU level with Renault and not too far behind Ferrari.

Hopefully it means Alonso and Button will be up near the top fighting with the Ferraris and Red Bulls rather than trying to hold off Force India and Williams.

JosiasJessop said:

John_M said:

JosiasJessop said:

John_M said:

CD13 said:

Mr M,

Thanks. I was hoping for a non-mathematical explanation. I know that photons don't experience time so their 13.8 billions years pass in an instant. To be honest, I had my doubts about electromagnetic radiation even at school.

And as for Stephen (Black Hole) Hawking claiming that his analogy for time beginning at a point is like saying you can't go further South than the South Pole. Nope, you can drop off the Earth altogether. I prefer to think that C is a maximum otherwise we'd never be able to make sense of the universe. You could see a window break before the cricket ball was hit.

Perhaps time really is an illusion? Perhaps things do happen all at once.

"The Story of Your Life' by Ted Chiang is a lovely little novella about the nature of time and First Contact. It's been butchered into a film (Arrival) , but it still might be worth reading/watching.
(Snip)

The trailer for Arrival gave me goose bumps. I'm really looking forward to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g

I also like the fact that one of the places the aliens land is 'Devon, UK'

The story collection it comes from is well worth a read. I love Ted Chiang. He writes interesting and challenging stuff without descending into pseud's territory.

The novella is a genuinely touching yet haunting love story about two people who have yet to meet. I'll leave it at that.

This one?
https://mathisgasser.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/ted-chiang_story-of-your-life_2000.pdf

I've not read it, but Mrs J has. She's a great sci-fi fan.

That's the one. Though I'd prefer it if people bought it .

AndyJS said:

"Jeremy Corbyn was unreachable on Tuesday afternoon during the 'traingate' row because he was making jam, according to reports."

That clears up where the "jam" in "jam-packed" disappeared to.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/25/aides-unable-to-reach-jeremy-corbyn-during-traingate-row-because/

This really is Thick of It stuff. What's amazing is that after a year of this kind of nonsense, no-one seems to have learned anything.

JosiasJessop said:

MaxPB said:

For F1 fans out there. This weekend could be quite tasty excluding Mercedes. McLaren have spent 7 tokens on their PU, 3 on the ICE, 2 on the turbo and 2 on the compressor. They are also bringing a fuel and lubricant upgrade courtesy of Exxon. Rumours say that the fuel is worth 20hp and the PU upgrade is worth ~35hp, at Spa 7hp is worth a tenth of a second. The PU upgrade so far have brought 20hp worth of performance gains plus additional hybrid deployment. If these upgrades turn out to be genuine then it puts the Honda PU level with Renault and not too far behind Ferrari.

Hopefully it means Alonso and Button will be up near the top fighting with the Ferraris and Red Bulls rather than trying to hold off Force India and Williams.

A question: I thought F1 fuel had to be the same for all teams, and obtained from a source local to the race. It was to stop the stupid situation we had in the 1980s when teams were using some very exotic additives in their fuel?

Am I misremembering, or has that rule been relaxed?

Additives are regulated, but fuel development is allowed.

MaxPB said:

JosiasJessop said:

MaxPB said:

For F1 fans out there. This weekend could be quite tasty excluding Mercedes. McLaren have spent 7 tokens on their PU, 3 on the ICE, 2 on the turbo and 2 on the compressor. They are also bringing a fuel and lubricant upgrade courtesy of Exxon. Rumours say that the fuel is worth 20hp and the PU upgrade is worth ~35hp, at Spa 7hp is worth a tenth of a second. The PU upgrade so far have brought 20hp worth of performance gains plus additional hybrid deployment. If these upgrades turn out to be genuine then it puts the Honda PU level with Renault and not too far behind Ferrari.

Hopefully it means Alonso and Button will be up near the top fighting with the Ferraris and Red Bulls rather than trying to hold off Force India and Williams.

A question: I thought F1 fuel had to be the same for all teams, and obtained from a source local to the race. It was to stop the stupid situation we had in the 1980s when teams were using some very exotic additives in their fuel?

Am I misremembering, or has that rule been relaxed?

Additives are regulated, but fuel development is allowed.

Ah thanks. I'm probably out of date then. I'm thinking back to the time around when refuelling was reintroduced, and might even be wrong about that.

More problems at Stafford hospital:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-37185261

But it's alright in Burnham's eyes: Liverpudlians deserve endless public inquiries, whilst Staffordonians shouldn't know the truth.

You know, because the truth might cause the NHS reputational harm ...

Andy Burnham is scum (tm).

david_herdson said:

AndyJS said:

"Jeremy Corbyn was unreachable on Tuesday afternoon during the 'traingate' row because he was making jam, according to reports."

That clears up where the "jam" in "jam-packed" disappeared to.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/25/aides-unable-to-reach-jeremy-corbyn-during-traingate-row-because/

This really is Thick of It stuff. What's amazing is that after a year of this kind of nonsense, no-one seems to have learned anything.

The Corbyn team isn't bothered with media management (or 'playing the media's game' as they would probably put it)

They are driven by blinkered thinking and (misplaced) loyalty to ideas and people - even when they have long since been discredited.

It is a post-logic position...

PlatoSaid said:

Leave EU
Watch @Nigel_Farage 's phenomenal speech from tonight's Mississippi Trump rally.
https://t.co/8hlQsvaEyp

The Rebuplican establishment must watch that and cry into their beer. If Farage were American he would no doubt become POTUS this cycle vs Hillary.

Mr. Max, thanks.

McLaren will also benefit, more next year, by getting Prodromou a little while ago. With Newey in a backseat, if not out of the car altogether, and Allison seemingly out of the game, that'll be a relative benefit to the team as well.

I think I said a few weeks ago that McLaren would be where I'd focus for a potential long odds title bet next year. I'll also, if I go ahead with spread-betting, be looking at them closely.

Ferrari's treatment of staff (Allison seems an exception, due to family circumstances) by tossing them overboard so easily hasn't made recruiting any easier for them.

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Max, thanks.

McLaren will also benefit, more next year, by getting Prodromou a little while ago. With Newey in a backseat, if not out of the car altogether, and Allison seemingly out of the game, that'll be a relative benefit to the team as well.

I think I said a few weeks ago that McLaren would be where I'd focus for a potential long odds title bet next year. I'll also, if I go ahead with spread-betting, be looking at them closely.

Ferrari's treatment of staff (Allison seems an exception, due to family circumstances) by tossing them overboard so easily hasn't made recruiting any easier for them.

Well the other issue Ferrari have is that they now have a mechanical engineer in charge of aerodynamic development. Doesn't seem like a very smart move to me. I wouldn't ve surprised if Vettel makes the jump to Mercedes or McLaren in 2018 once his contract runs out. Ferrari seem to be having trouble treading water.

On RBR the majority of design work for Ben Ainslie's boat seems to be done, I'd read that Newey will be taking a leading role for the 2017 car as it will be based on new regulations which he finds interesting.

JosiasJessop said:

More problems at Stafford hospital:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-37185261

But it's alright in Burnham's eyes: Liverpudlians deserve endless public inquiries, whilst Staffordonians shouldn't know the truth.

You know, because the truth might cause the NHS reputational harm ...

Andy Burnham is scum (tm).

If it's unsafe for children, why is safe for adults?