Could Truss be tempted by an early election? – politicalbetting.com

londonpubman said:

Not unless she wants to be the shortest serving PM of all time!

DougSeal said:

She might get a polling boost but it would have to be of an unprecedented size to make the risk worthwhile.

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

algarkirk said:

rcs1000 said:

Nigelb said:

(FPT)
Good article about the Pfizer/Moderna lawsuit.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccine-patent-fight-expands

It actually sounds quite a lot like the antibody lawsuits, which went on for many years. It's complicated; a lot of other people's discoveries were involved in commercialising the technology; and there isn't one thing, but many different things in dispute.

Just a flavour:
...Specifically, they say that Moderna patents filed between 2010 and 2016 have been infringed, and in their press release they highlight two features in particular. They point out that Pfizer took several mRNA vaccine candidates into clinical testing (including some that they say would not have infringed), but ultimately picked one “that has the exact mRNA chemical modification” as theirs. They say that they began developing this in 2010 and were the first to validate it in human trials in 2015. Without seeing the lawsuit itself (which I’m sure we’ll get a look at soon), they have to be talking about pseudouridine incorporation. I am not going to try to do a detailed evaluation of Moderna’s IP here - people get paid a lot of money to do that sort of thing, because it ain’t easy - and I am not going to pass any judgment on who has a case and who doesn’t. But this is surely not going to be as straightforward as the Moderna press release makes it sound (what patent fight ever is?) The first thing to know is that the pseudouridine idea, with its higher levels of transcription and lower immunogenicity, was discovered in 2008 by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman and co-workers, and both Moderna and BioNTech licensed their patents. So there’s going to be a lot to work through here - not least because Moderna at first did not license this technology, claiming that it had its own modification and that BioNTech copied that. It’s a mess....

Can I recommend a novel called The Local? It's set in the East Texas District Court and around the world of patent lawyers. It's also a fun legal thriller.

Sounds as thrilling as Bill Knox's fishery protection thrillers. Or indeed C J Box's thrillers about making sure Wyoming moose hunters have a the requisite licence.

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This is another reason we should have let Covid rip. It was a once in a lifetime chance to "shuffle off" the very old and the very fat, rebalancing the world

Instead, we sacrificed the economy to save those with no more than 2 years to live anyway, or stupid people who just can't stop eating doughnuts

It was insane, and completely counter-Darwinian. And now we shall pay

rcs1000 said:

algarkirk said:

rcs1000 said:

Nigelb said:

(FPT)
Good article about the Pfizer/Moderna lawsuit.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccine-patent-fight-expands

It actually sounds quite a lot like the antibody lawsuits, which went on for many years. It's complicated; a lot of other people's discoveries were involved in commercialising the technology; and there isn't one thing, but many different things in dispute.

Just a flavour:
...Specifically, they say that Moderna patents filed between 2010 and 2016 have been infringed, and in their press release they highlight two features in particular. They point out that Pfizer took several mRNA vaccine candidates into clinical testing (including some that they say would not have infringed), but ultimately picked one “that has the exact mRNA chemical modification” as theirs. They say that they began developing this in 2010 and were the first to validate it in human trials in 2015. Without seeing the lawsuit itself (which I’m sure we’ll get a look at soon), they have to be talking about pseudouridine incorporation. I am not going to try to do a detailed evaluation of Moderna’s IP here - people get paid a lot of money to do that sort of thing, because it ain’t easy - and I am not going to pass any judgment on who has a case and who doesn’t. But this is surely not going to be as straightforward as the Moderna press release makes it sound (what patent fight ever is?) The first thing to know is that the pseudouridine idea, with its higher levels of transcription and lower immunogenicity, was discovered in 2008 by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman and co-workers, and both Moderna and BioNTech licensed their patents. So there’s going to be a lot to work through here - not least because Moderna at first did not license this technology, claiming that it had its own modification and that BioNTech copied that. It’s a mess....

Can I recommend a novel called The Local? It's set in the East Texas District Court and around the world of patent lawyers. It's also a fun legal thriller.

Sounds as thrilling as Bill Knox's fishery protection thrillers. Or indeed C J Box's thrillers about making sure Wyoming moose hunters have a the requisite licence.

It's a murder mystery. Set in the world intellectual property law. In a small town in East Texas.

I really enjoyed it, and the reviews have been excellent too.

rcs1000 said:

darkage said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This reminds me of something I posted a couple of days ago. Comments from telegraph readers on the cost of living crisis.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/it-s-time-for-the-young-to-pay-for-us-and-stop-complaining/ar-AA113eUt?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=a0659a99488f4d90565aa6c4d1e49f31

"Thousands of you took to our comments section to air your thoughts on the matter and, while many readers expressed sympathy with the young, there was also outrage – outrage that having to endure food rationing, ballooning inflation, power shortages and myriad financial crashes in previous decades should be seen as “having it easy”. Not to mention the decades of fiscal responsibility, careful saving and hard graft that have translated into comfortable retirements. Advice was freely and generously given on how the young might face down economic hardship. Here is what you had to say... "

"When we were young, we paid for the pensions of the old and retired. Now it’s for the young to pay for us and shut up complaining.”


..."Modern generations, due to, no matter the cost, wanting everything now, have put themselves dangerously in debt and when an unexpected financial crisis happens, they are left all at sea, unable to pay the essential bills first. I am lucky to not be seriously affected by next year’s enormous fuel bills, but why should my savings be raided and my pension frozen to subsidise the fiscally incompetent?”

And there you have the Conservatives' massive problem:

They are dependent on the oldies.

If they screw over the people who elected them by - you know - acknowledging the problem, then they will be out of power for twenty years.

But if they continue to screw over the workers, then the situation will continue to worsen, and when we finally do recognize it... it will be so much harder to fix.

Taz said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This is another reason we should have let Covid rip. It was a once in a lifetime chance to "shuffle off" the very old and the very fat, rebalancing the world

Instead, we sacrificed the economy to save those with no more than 2 years to live anyway, or stupid people who just can't stop eating doughnuts

It was insane, and completely counter-Darwinian. And now we shall pay

I’m not young, I’m overweight. I had covid. I twatted it into the neversphere.

rcs1000 said:

algarkirk said:

rcs1000 said:

Nigelb said:

(FPT)
Good article about the Pfizer/Moderna lawsuit.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccine-patent-fight-expands

It actually sounds quite a lot like the antibody lawsuits, which went on for many years. It's complicated; a lot of other people's discoveries were involved in commercialising the technology; and there isn't one thing, but many different things in dispute.

Just a flavour:
...Specifically, they say that Moderna patents filed between 2010 and 2016 have been infringed, and in their press release they highlight two features in particular. They point out that Pfizer took several mRNA vaccine candidates into clinical testing (including some that they say would not have infringed), but ultimately picked one “that has the exact mRNA chemical modification” as theirs. They say that they began developing this in 2010 and were the first to validate it in human trials in 2015. Without seeing the lawsuit itself (which I’m sure we’ll get a look at soon), they have to be talking about pseudouridine incorporation. I am not going to try to do a detailed evaluation of Moderna’s IP here - people get paid a lot of money to do that sort of thing, because it ain’t easy - and I am not going to pass any judgment on who has a case and who doesn’t. But this is surely not going to be as straightforward as the Moderna press release makes it sound (what patent fight ever is?) The first thing to know is that the pseudouridine idea, with its higher levels of transcription and lower immunogenicity, was discovered in 2008 by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman and co-workers, and both Moderna and BioNTech licensed their patents. So there’s going to be a lot to work through here - not least because Moderna at first did not license this technology, claiming that it had its own modification and that BioNTech copied that. It’s a mess....

Can I recommend a novel called The Local? It's set in the East Texas District Court and around the world of patent lawyers. It's also a fun legal thriller.

Sounds as thrilling as Bill Knox's fishery protection thrillers. Or indeed C J Box's thrillers about making sure Wyoming moose hunters have a the requisite licence.

It's a murder mystery. Set in the world intellectual property law. In a small town in East Texas.

I really enjoyed it, and the reviews have been excellent too.

Carnyx said:

rcs1000 said:

algarkirk said:

rcs1000 said:

Nigelb said:

(FPT)
Good article about the Pfizer/Moderna lawsuit.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccine-patent-fight-expands

It actually sounds quite a lot like the antibody lawsuits, which went on for many years. It's complicated; a lot of other people's discoveries were involved in commercialising the technology; and there isn't one thing, but many different things in dispute.

Just a flavour:
...Specifically, they say that Moderna patents filed between 2010 and 2016 have been infringed, and in their press release they highlight two features in particular. They point out that Pfizer took several mRNA vaccine candidates into clinical testing (including some that they say would not have infringed), but ultimately picked one “that has the exact mRNA chemical modification” as theirs. They say that they began developing this in 2010 and were the first to validate it in human trials in 2015. Without seeing the lawsuit itself (which I’m sure we’ll get a look at soon), they have to be talking about pseudouridine incorporation. I am not going to try to do a detailed evaluation of Moderna’s IP here - people get paid a lot of money to do that sort of thing, because it ain’t easy - and I am not going to pass any judgment on who has a case and who doesn’t. But this is surely not going to be as straightforward as the Moderna press release makes it sound (what patent fight ever is?) The first thing to know is that the pseudouridine idea, with its higher levels of transcription and lower immunogenicity, was discovered in 2008 by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman and co-workers, and both Moderna and BioNTech licensed their patents. So there’s going to be a lot to work through here - not least because Moderna at first did not license this technology, claiming that it had its own modification and that BioNTech copied that. It’s a mess....

Can I recommend a novel called The Local? It's set in the East Texas District Court and around the world of patent lawyers. It's also a fun legal thriller.

Sounds as thrilling as Bill Knox's fishery protection thrillers. Or indeed C J Box's thrillers about making sure Wyoming moose hunters have a the requisite licence.

It's a murder mystery. Set in the world intellectual property law. In a small town in East Texas.

I really enjoyed it, and the reviews have been excellent too.

Mm, about a lawyer, must be good if the author can cope with such an antihero. Duly ordered, will make a change from SF and Viking chop-em thrillers.

Leon said:

Chris said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This is another reason we should have let Covid rip. It was a once in a lifetime chance to "shuffle off" the very old and the very fat, rebalancing the world

Instead, we sacrificed the economy to save those with no more than 2 years to live anyway, or stupid people who just can't stop eating doughnuts

It was insane, and completely counter-Darwinian. And now we shall pay

Supporters of the Conservative Party should be very careful about what they wish for in terms of killing off the elderly and stupid.

Touche

But my loyalty to the "Conservative Party" is about the same as my loyalty to European golf, practically zero, if not actually zero. Or less

My loyalty is to my fellow humans, my fellow Britons. We have screwed the pooch

dixiedean said:

Taz said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

That’s a ‘happy coincidence’ for the energy providers.

Does that apply to the communal areas or the whole block including the residential properties ?

Includes residential properties. Such as mine. The landlord has agreed to keep it at the cap until March 2023. But standing charge at 70p a day from October. Trebled.

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

Taz said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

That’s a ‘happy coincidence’ for the energy providers.

Does that apply to the communal areas or the whole block including the residential properties ?

Includes residential properties. Such as mine. The landlord has agreed to keep it at the cap until March 2023. But standing charge at 70p a day from October. Trebled.

So is it because you're a tenant then?

darkage said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This reminds me of something I posted a couple of days ago. Comments from telegraph readers on the cost of living crisis.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/it-s-time-for-the-young-to-pay-for-us-and-stop-complaining/ar-AA113eUt?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=a0659a99488f4d90565aa6c4d1e49f31

"Thousands of you took to our comments section to air your thoughts on the matter and, while many readers expressed sympathy with the young, there was also outrage – outrage that having to endure food rationing, ballooning inflation, power shortages and myriad financial crashes in previous decades should be seen as “having it easy”. Not to mention the decades of fiscal responsibility, careful saving and hard graft that have translated into comfortable retirements. Advice was freely and generously given on how the young might face down economic hardship. Here is what you had to say... "

"When we were young, we paid for the pensions of the old and retired. Now it’s for the young to pay for us and shut up complaining.”


..."Modern generations, due to, no matter the cost, wanting everything now, have put themselves dangerously in debt and when an unexpected financial crisis happens, they are left all at sea, unable to pay the essential bills first. I am lucky to not be seriously affected by next year’s enormous fuel bills, but why should my savings be raided and my pension frozen to subsidise the fiscally incompetent?”

ydoethur said:

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This is another reason we should have let Covid rip. It was a once in a lifetime chance to "shuffle off" the very old and the very fat, rebalancing the world

Instead, we sacrificed the economy to save those with no more than 2 years to live anyway, or stupid people who just can't stop eating doughnuts

It was insane, and completely counter-Darwinian. And now we shall pay

It was instructive on PB that we didn't have any posters panicking so much about COVID's impact on their personal health that they fled to another country and locked themselves down hard there to avoid it.

Leon said:

Anecdote

I had a meeting with a Santander Personal Financial Advisor today. Nice guy, amiable, quite interesting

We got talking about the energy crisis, and he said his solution was "nationalise the energy providers, and take their profits"

I pointed out that Yes you could do that, but it didn't address the fundamental issue, gas and oil is very expensive, because Putin, so the nationalised companies would still have to pay shedloads for energy. He hadn't really thought of this, or so it seemed

After that, he was stumped for ideas. And he is a pro financial expert?

In his defence, I'm not sure anyone has any ideas, and for the rest of the meeting he gave me excellent advice

algarkirk said:

Carnyx said:

rcs1000 said:

algarkirk said:

rcs1000 said:

Nigelb said:

(FPT)
Good article about the Pfizer/Moderna lawsuit.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccine-patent-fight-expands

It actually sounds quite a lot like the antibody lawsuits, which went on for many years. It's complicated; a lot of other people's discoveries were involved in commercialising the technology; and there isn't one thing, but many different things in dispute.

Just a flavour:
...Specifically, they say that Moderna patents filed between 2010 and 2016 have been infringed, and in their press release they highlight two features in particular. They point out that Pfizer took several mRNA vaccine candidates into clinical testing (including some that they say would not have infringed), but ultimately picked one “that has the exact mRNA chemical modification” as theirs. They say that they began developing this in 2010 and were the first to validate it in human trials in 2015. Without seeing the lawsuit itself (which I’m sure we’ll get a look at soon), they have to be talking about pseudouridine incorporation. I am not going to try to do a detailed evaluation of Moderna’s IP here - people get paid a lot of money to do that sort of thing, because it ain’t easy - and I am not going to pass any judgment on who has a case and who doesn’t. But this is surely not going to be as straightforward as the Moderna press release makes it sound (what patent fight ever is?) The first thing to know is that the pseudouridine idea, with its higher levels of transcription and lower immunogenicity, was discovered in 2008 by Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman and co-workers, and both Moderna and BioNTech licensed their patents. So there’s going to be a lot to work through here - not least because Moderna at first did not license this technology, claiming that it had its own modification and that BioNTech copied that. It’s a mess....

Can I recommend a novel called The Local? It's set in the East Texas District Court and around the world of patent lawyers. It's also a fun legal thriller.

Sounds as thrilling as Bill Knox's fishery protection thrillers. Or indeed C J Box's thrillers about making sure Wyoming moose hunters have a the requisite licence.

It's a murder mystery. Set in the world intellectual property law. In a small town in East Texas.

I really enjoyed it, and the reviews have been excellent too.

Mm, about a lawyer, must be good if the author can cope with such an antihero. Duly ordered, will make a change from SF and Viking chop-em thrillers.

Lawyers. Add Michael Gilbert 'Smallbone deceased' and Cyril Hare.

dixiedean said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

Taz said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

That’s a ‘happy coincidence’ for the energy providers.

Does that apply to the communal areas or the whole block including the residential properties ?

Includes residential properties. Such as mine. The landlord has agreed to keep it at the cap until March 2023. But standing charge at 70p a day from October. Trebled.

So is it because you're a tenant then?

Nah. It's the entire building AIUI.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Leon said:

Anecdote

I had a meeting with a Santander Personal Financial Advisor today. Nice guy, amiable, quite interesting

We got talking about the energy crisis, and he said his solution was "nationalise the energy providers, and take their profits"

I pointed out that Yes you could do that, but it didn't address the fundamental issue, gas and oil is very expensive, because Putin, so the nationalised companies would still have to pay shedloads for energy. He hadn't really thought of this, or so it seemed

After that, he was stumped for ideas. And he is a pro financial expert?

In his defence, I'm not sure anyone has any ideas, and for the rest of the meeting he gave me excellent advice

But if they do make record profits this year, something is clearly very wrong with the consumer energy market that needs sorting. Profit isn't a dirty word, but big profits, with no competition, is not good - Adam Smith himself had a lot to say on monopolies and overpowerful corporations.

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

Sheesh.

Is that going to be common for all blocks of flats?

rcs1000 said:

darkage said:

rcs1000 said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

MrEd said:

Truss' problem is not that she's barking mad (although she has a bit of the messianic about her), it's that she's pushing a creed - neo-Thatcherism - that is turning completely out of fashion.

We are now at the end of the 40 year+ Reagan / Thatcher consensus on how the world should be run. Covid put the final nail in the coffin, with its massive support of individuals and businesses ruining the idea Governments shouldn't intervene while businesses have done a great job at convincing people that the idea they can be trusted to be self-regulating is a complete fallacy. To quote an example, the fact that Dido Harding survived for years as a CEO with such compensation is a sign of how much the system is broken.

We are now likely to see a return to some form of the post-1945 social democracy consensus in some form or another. Whoever gets that formula right will have electoral alchemy.

Some of us take the opposite view of course. That after years of ever increasing taxes, expenditure and interventionism, leading to the highest tax rate in 74 years, that now is precisely the time that the Conservatives need to be making the argument for lower taxation and interventionism.

If not now, then when?

Sunak wants to raise taxes like Gordon Brown, raise NI like Gordon Brown raise Corporation Tax like Gordon Brown and views everything through a prism of all money belonging to the Treasury like Gordon Brown. I opposed Gordon Brown, I'd be a pure hypocrite if I supported Gordon Sunak (I nearly wrote Rishi Brown but that sounds racist).

Yes it may lose the next election, but I'm ok with that. I'd rather the Tories lose than win as Labour.

I've posted the chart in the past, but it is worth remembering that spending on the military, on education, on transport, on law & order etc. has all declined, while spending on pensions and healthcare has risen.

Let's leave aside the last couple of year because Covid, and you see that State Pension spending has risen from about 3% of GDP in 1990 to almost 8% now. Thanks to the triple lock, it is pretty much guaranteed to reach 12% by the end of the decade.

Health care costs have followed a similar pattern: from 4% of GDP in 1990 to 7% in 2019. This isn't because we're showering doctors with money (most have seen drops in earnings since 2010), but because the annual health care costs of an 80-year-old are 10-15x that of a 20-year-old. And we have an ever greater proportion of the country who are in the older cohort.

An ageing population means more recipients of pensions, fewer people in work paying taxes, and greater demands for healthcare.

The result is that we have a situation where there is austerity across large parts of government spending, and yet government spending and the tax burdens on working people continue to rise. By 2030, we could well have health care and pensions accounting for 20% of GDP. That's 3x the relative level of 1990 and it means 12 minutes of every hour of work you do goes in paying the pensions and healthcare of retirees.

If you look around the world, the developed economies with the worst economic performance in the last fifteen years have been the ones with the worst demographics - Japan and Italy.

That neither Ms Truss nor Mr Sunak nor Mr Starmer seems willing to address the massive fucking elephant in the room tells you a great deal about the seriousness of British politics right now.

My comment may seem unnecessarily negative, but actually things are even worse.

You see an ageing population means a greater proportion of workers are spending their time cleaning the bottoms of the elderly.

Now this is important work (if you have an aged population), but it also means that a greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in activities that are fundamentally low productivity and which do not garner any export earnings. Plus, of course, it means that exporting businesses have to pay more to get employees: perhaps they are better off setting up in countries without major demographic drag.

This reminds me of something I posted a couple of days ago. Comments from telegraph readers on the cost of living crisis.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/it-s-time-for-the-young-to-pay-for-us-and-stop-complaining/ar-AA113eUt?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=a0659a99488f4d90565aa6c4d1e49f31

"Thousands of you took to our comments section to air your thoughts on the matter and, while many readers expressed sympathy with the young, there was also outrage – outrage that having to endure food rationing, ballooning inflation, power shortages and myriad financial crashes in previous decades should be seen as “having it easy”. Not to mention the decades of fiscal responsibility, careful saving and hard graft that have translated into comfortable retirements. Advice was freely and generously given on how the young might face down economic hardship. Here is what you had to say... "

"When we were young, we paid for the pensions of the old and retired. Now it’s for the young to pay for us and shut up complaining.”


..."Modern generations, due to, no matter the cost, wanting everything now, have put themselves dangerously in debt and when an unexpected financial crisis happens, they are left all at sea, unable to pay the essential bills first. I am lucky to not be seriously affected by next year’s enormous fuel bills, but why should my savings be raided and my pension frozen to subsidise the fiscally incompetent?”

And there you have the Conservatives' massive problem:

They are dependent on the oldies.

If they screw over the people who elected them by - you know - acknowledging the problem, then they will be out of power for twenty years.

But if they continue to screw over the workers, then the situation will continue to worsen, and when we finally do recognize it... it will be so much harder to fix.

HYUFD said:

Liz Truss confirmed in the hustings last week she would not call a general election until 2024 at the earliest. Given the polls suggest Labour would win a majority at the moment that is wise but even if she got a huge bounce and took a clear poll lead (despite polls now having her trailing Starmer as preferred PM) an early election would not be wise as she would still likely lose seats and as 2017 showed voters do not like unnecessary elections called by parties with clear majorities

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

Taz said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

That’s a ‘happy coincidence’ for the energy providers.

Does that apply to the communal areas or the whole block including the residential properties ?

Includes residential properties. Such as mine. The landlord has agreed to keep it at the cap until March 2023. But standing charge at 70p a day from October. Trebled.

So is it because you're a tenant then?

Nah. It's the entire building AIUI.

So how is that defined as a commercial premises? Does it have offices in it or something as well?

geoffw said:

It's hardly a surprise that a finance person has no answer to the energy crisis. Probably not many economists do either, because the solution is upstream, in Moscow and it is military. We depend on Kyiv to sort it out, and Boris has been in the man on the spot while the chicken-lickens at home are crying that the sky is falling in.

rcs1000 said:

Can I suggest an unusual pick for the Dems' VP candidate in 2024 (assuming it is not Ms Harris): Ro Khanna.

He is an Indian American, and the Congressman who represents Silicon Valley. He's been on the campaign path in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, etc., which is not something you'd normally do if you weren't interested in... a national campaign.

Because of where is district is, he has been a recipient of donations from some of the richest people in America.

And his big focus is on bringing manufacturing back to America.

I think he's going to run for President with the goal of raising his national standing. And I think he's very impressive. Could he win the nomination? Highly unlikely. But he might well grab himself a good job in the next administration. And if - say - Amy Klobucher was the nominee, he would be a perfect VP pick.

Nigelb said:

rcs1000 said:

Can I suggest an unusual pick for the Dems' VP candidate in 2024 (assuming it is not Ms Harris): Ro Khanna.

He is an Indian American, and the Congressman who represents Silicon Valley. He's been on the campaign path in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, etc., which is not something you'd normally do if you weren't interested in... a national campaign.

Because of where is district is, he has been a recipient of donations from some of the richest people in America.

And his big focus is on bringing manufacturing back to America.

I think he's going to run for President with the goal of raising his national standing. And I think he's very impressive. Could he win the nomination? Highly unlikely. But he might well grab himself a good job in the next administration. And if - say - Amy Klobucher was the nominee, he would be a perfect VP pick.

Mentioned on the last thread, when I noted that you can't bet on him at the moment.

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

Anecdote

I had a meeting with a Santander Personal Financial Advisor today. Nice guy, amiable, quite interesting

We got talking about the energy crisis, and he said his solution was "nationalise the energy providers, and take their profits"

I pointed out that Yes you could do that, but it didn't address the fundamental issue, gas and oil is very expensive, because Putin, so the nationalised companies would still have to pay shedloads for energy. He hadn't really thought of this, or so it seemed

After that, he was stumped for ideas. And he is a pro financial expert?

In his defence, I'm not sure anyone has any ideas, and for the rest of the meeting he gave me excellent advice

A "Santander Personal Financial Advisor" is not a pro financial expert.

rottenborough said:

HYUFD said:

Liz Truss confirmed in the hustings last week she would not call a general election until 2024 at the earliest. Given the polls suggest Labour would win a majority at the moment that is wise but even if she got a huge bounce and took a clear poll lead (despite polls now having her trailing Starmer as preferred PM) an early election would not be wise as she would still likely lose seats and as 2017 showed voters do not like unnecessary elections called by parties with clear majorities

At the moment she is guaranteed two years as PM (well, unless her own MPs decide to ditch her next summer). Why would you gamble that in exchange for possibly getting seven years as PM but with a major risk of being dumped within months of taking office?

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

Taz said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

That’s a ‘happy coincidence’ for the energy providers.

Does that apply to the communal areas or the whole block including the residential properties ?

Includes residential properties. Such as mine. The landlord has agreed to keep it at the cap until March 2023. But standing charge at 70p a day from October. Trebled.

So is it because you're a tenant then?

Nah. It's the entire building AIUI.

So how is that defined as a commercial premises? Does it have offices in it or something as well?

Leon said:

rcs1000 said:

Leon said:

Anecdote

I had a meeting with a Santander Personal Financial Advisor today. Nice guy, amiable, quite interesting

We got talking about the energy crisis, and he said his solution was "nationalise the energy providers, and take their profits"

I pointed out that Yes you could do that, but it didn't address the fundamental issue, gas and oil is very expensive, because Putin, so the nationalised companies would still have to pay shedloads for energy. He hadn't really thought of this, or so it seemed

After that, he was stumped for ideas. And he is a pro financial expert?

In his defence, I'm not sure anyone has any ideas, and for the rest of the meeting he gave me excellent advice

A "Santander Personal Financial Advisor" is not a pro financial expert.

Christ, you do love your footling pedantry. You know what I mean

geoffw said:

williamglenn said:

geoffw said:

It's hardly a surprise that a finance person has no answer to the energy crisis. Probably not many economists do either, because the solution is upstream, in Moscow and it is military. We depend on Kyiv to sort it out, and Boris has been in the man on the spot while the chicken-lickens at home are crying that the sky is falling in.

Although even a defeat of Russia doesn't solve the problem, unless you want Western countries to go straight back to making deals with Putin.

A post-defeat Russia will be desperate to sell its hydrocarbons.

geoffw said:

williamglenn said:

geoffw said:

It's hardly a surprise that a finance person has no answer to the energy crisis. Probably not many economists do either, because the solution is upstream, in Moscow and it is military. We depend on Kyiv to sort it out, and Boris has been in the man on the spot while the chicken-lickens at home are crying that the sky is falling in.

Although even a defeat of Russia doesn't solve the problem, unless you want Western countries to go straight back to making deals with Putin.

A post-defeat Russia will be desperate to sell its hydrocarbons.

noneoftheabove said:

rottenborough said:

HYUFD said:

Liz Truss confirmed in the hustings last week she would not call a general election until 2024 at the earliest. Given the polls suggest Labour would win a majority at the moment that is wise but even if she got a huge bounce and took a clear poll lead (despite polls now having her trailing Starmer as preferred PM) an early election would not be wise as she would still likely lose seats and as 2017 showed voters do not like unnecessary elections called by parties with clear majorities

At the moment she is guaranteed two years as PM (well, unless her own MPs decide to ditch her next summer). Why would you gamble that in exchange for possibly getting seven years as PM but with a major risk of being dumped within months of taking office?

How many MPs really believe in her and/or think she will do a good job? My guess between 50-100 with another 150 willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. A big majority on paper but not a strong position.

NickyBreakspear said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

Taz said:

dixiedean said:

Just discovered my block of flats is not subject to the price cap, but counts as a "commercial" property, for gas for heating and hot water.

That’s a ‘happy coincidence’ for the energy providers.

Does that apply to the communal areas or the whole block including the residential properties ?

Includes residential properties. Such as mine. The landlord has agreed to keep it at the cap until March 2023. But standing charge at 70p a day from October. Trebled.

So is it because you're a tenant then?

Nah. It's the entire building AIUI.

So how is that defined as a commercial premises? Does it have offices in it or something as well?

The definition is in the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Act 2018, section 12 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/21/enacted

“domestic customer” means a customer under a domestic supply contract;

“domestic supply contract” means a contract (including a deemed supply contract) for the supply of gas or electricity at domestic premises wholly or mainly for domestic purposes;