Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h The govt currently has no credible plan for reducing the fiscal exposure of the energy package if energy prices don't fall. It urgently needs to do that if it is to restore market confidence.
Lili is getting there, and it is great to have some company over here in the tiny grouping that can see the bleeding obvious no one else apparently can see, but it’s happening too slowly for government to act quickly,
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
The counter examples are manifest - Bezos has poured billions into.. not reaching orbit yet. The car companies took up electric cars late and are (in a number of cases) struggling with them.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication skills, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
I understand the desire to want to believe that rich people must be deserving of their wealth and therefore just have talents most mere mortals don't have, otherwise it is really difficult to justify why rich people have their wealth and other people don't. But most geniuses don't become amazingly wealthy, and most amazingly wealthy people are not geniuses. The modern bunch of self made billionaires may have had some good ideas, and implemented them, but they aren't titans. They're guys whose family had cash and had opportunities most other people didn't who got lucky. At a certain level of wealth it's hard to stop being rich; see Trump - another bad business man who still managed to keep being rich either by luck or just crime stuff.
For Sid Meier's Civilisation fans we now have a new lowest entry on the leaderboard to replace Dan Quayle at the end of the game for the very lowest of scores.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
What Musk is very good at is driving implantation of innovation.
Plenty of people were building hi performance electric cars - as one off, custom conversions. Turning that into a mass production thing upended the car industry, globally. When I worked in the energy business, the car companies were always promising that they would send us a prototype of their hydrogen powered car. Next year. When the time was right. When they’d washed their hair….
Everyone and his dog had plans for reusable rockets and making rockets cheaper. Musk drove actually doing this - and the rest of the world is still playing catch-up.
LEO data constellations have been attempted before - getting one to market, not so much.
This skill has nothing to do with skill in geopolitics. Or any other kind of politics.
I am reminded of the disgusting and appalling remarks by Albert Einstein during the Korean War, to Sidney Hook and others.
Fun fact, Oscar Wilde could have travelled to his own wedding in a production rechargeable electric car.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
If everything we know about him doesn't convince you of this, fine, we potentially have an entire discovery process in a trial coming up that will almost certainly show it.
Being extremely wealthy is not a sign of intelligence. It is a sign that you a) probably started out life if not already extremely wealthy than at least well off and b) you don't have too many scruples about how you make more money. Neither of those things need much intelligence. Growing up with diamonds in your pocket will more likely than not allow you to grow up into a man with lots of money.
Almost the very faintest trace of chippiness showing up here. Brunel, Carnegie, Sugar, Ratcliffe.
As for Brunel, didn't he sometimes do his best to impoverish the stockholders of the companies for which he worked? Broad gauge, Great Eastern, atmospheric railway ... whereas Locke, for instance, was a far more reliable civil engineer.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
If everything we know about him doesn't convince you of this, fine, we potentially have an entire discovery process in a trial coming up that will almost certainly show it.
Being extremely wealthy is not a sign of intelligence. It is a sign that you a) probably started out life if not already extremely wealthy than at least well off and b) you don't have too many scruples about how you make more money. Neither of those things need much intelligence. Growing up with diamonds in your pocket will more likely than not allow you to grow up into a man with lots of money.
Almost the very faintest trace of chippiness showing up here. Brunel, Carnegie, Sugar, Ratcliffe.
As for Brunel, didn't he sometimes do his best to impoverish the stockholders of the companies for which he worked? Broad gauge, Great Eastern, atmospheric railway ... whereas Locke, for instance, was a far more reliable civil engineer.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
Except that Crimea is Ukranian, and that Putin’s idea of “Peace” gives him Crimea and a a couple of hundred thousand square miles of Ukraine.
Any deal for actual peace, requires Russians to go back to Russia, to repair the damage they’ve done to Ukraine, and to let Ukraine be sovereign in the future.
Crimea should become a separate independent nation, with a (fixed on this point) constitution that says it is neutral and no third party can base any military units there.
Should appeal to Putin's "If I can't have it nobody can have it" mentality.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
If everything we know about him doesn't convince you of this, fine, we potentially have an entire discovery process in a trial coming up that will almost certainly show it.
Being extremely wealthy is not a sign of intelligence. It is a sign that you a) probably started out life if not already extremely wealthy than at least well off and b) you don't have too many scruples about how you make more money. Neither of those things need much intelligence. Growing up with diamonds in your pocket will more likely than not allow you to grow up into a man with lots of money.
Almost the very faintest trace of chippiness showing up here. Brunel, Carnegie, Sugar, Ratcliffe.
As for Brunel, didn't he sometimes do his best to impoverish the stockholders of the companies for which he worked? Broad gauge, Great Eastern, atmospheric railway ... whereas Locke, for instance, was a far more reliable civil engineer.
Non-wealthy background was my only point.
Fair enough! But as a matter of interest have quickly checked.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
A man who has the world's most valuable electric vehicle brand and created a company that landed rockets (Something never done before) is not clever ???
Doesn't scan across to geopolitics though. You often get very clever people who metaphorically can't tie their own shoelaces when it comes to things outside their specialism. Musk just seems to be going in for some mediocre 'man of the world' barroom musing here. Better imo if he stuck to the electric cars and the rockets and wriggling out of that madly overpriced Twitter deal.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
If everything we know about him doesn't convince you of this, fine, we potentially have an entire discovery process in a trial coming up that will almost certainly show it.
Being extremely wealthy is not a sign of intelligence. It is a sign that you a) probably started out life if not already extremely wealthy than at least well off and b) you don't have too many scruples about how you make more money. Neither of those things need much intelligence. Growing up with diamonds in your pocket will more likely than not allow you to grow up into a man with lots of money.
Almost the very faintest trace of chippiness showing up here. Brunel, Carnegie, Sugar, Ratcliffe.
As for Brunel, didn't he sometimes do his best to impoverish the stockholders of the companies for which he worked? Broad gauge, Great Eastern, atmospheric railway ... whereas Locke, for instance, was a far more reliable civil engineer.
Non-wealthy background was my only point.
I'm not saying it is impossible to become wealthy without wealth, I'm just saying it's a lot easier to become extremely wealthy when you're already quite wealthy. And that talent is not necessarily a prerequisite for wealth or even success.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
A word used only by fanatics or those prone to exaggeration. Liz is incompetent and has an inflated opinion of her own ability, but that's not unusual in politicians and journalists.
She's not evil, she's a very naughty girl.
Hmm.
I generally would only use that word for someone who inflicts direct, deliberate, and severe harm on other humans.
Bonus points if they get kicks out of it.
I think there are better words to describe liz and her band of fellow idiots.
However, I don’t have a problem with describing her ideology as “evil”
In my experience, it’s a good lesson for life.
Use these kind of emotive, absolutist words to describe ideas or behaviours. Not actual people. Separate the person from the idea/behaviour.
Gets you into far fewer unwinnable fights. More likely to win people over to your side of an argument, too.
Disagreeing with you on whether government spending and tax levels should be plus/minus 200 basis points is evil?
I think you need your moral compass checked out
A feeble point, I can cause you to die horribly by altering the contents of the food you eat or the air you breathe by 20 or indeed 2 basis points. Let's include foreseeable consequences in our analysis
You're having a bad morning.
Nope.
A disagreement on tax policy and spending priorities in a democratic system is not “evil”. In fact it is profoundly unhelpful and even dangerous to characterise legitimate political difference in such a hyperbolic way.
Invading an independent country, slaughtering civilians and deporting their kids is evil.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
Except that Crimea is Ukranian, and that Putin’s idea of “Peace” gives him Crimea and a a couple of hundred thousand square miles of Ukraine.
Any deal for actual peace, requires Russians to go back to Russia, to repair the damage they’ve done to Ukraine, and to let Ukraine be sovereign in the future.
Crimea should become a separate independent nation, with a (fixed on this point) constitution that says it is neutral and no third party can base any military units there.
Should appeal to Putin's "If I can't have it nobody can have it" mentality.
Whatever happens it would need massive investment. If it comes from the West, then it would be Western aligned which is what Putin wouldn't want.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
He so is. And his much vaunted "politeness" is nothing of the sort, it's just another supercilious class war putdown technique. I'm afraid I can't listen to him without wishing him harm on a personal level. Nothing physical, I don't mean that, I'm not a monster, but a complete loss of wealth and status and the misery and sense of humiliation that (I sense) would flow from this.
There is a good deconstruction of the JRM 'act' in the London review of books from a few years ago. You might find it quite satisfying to read.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
A word used only by fanatics or those prone to exaggeration. Liz is incompetent and has an inflated opinion of her own ability, but that's not unusual in politicians and journalists.
She's not evil, she's a very naughty girl.
Hmm.
I generally would only use that word for someone who inflicts direct, deliberate, and severe harm on other humans.
Bonus points if they get kicks out of it.
I think there are better words to describe liz and her band of fellow idiots.
However, I don’t have a problem with describing her ideology as “evil”
In my experience, it’s a good lesson for life.
Use these kind of emotive, absolutist words to describe ideas or behaviours. Not actual people. Separate the person from the idea/behaviour.
Gets you into far fewer unwinnable fights. More likely to win people over to your side of an argument, too.
Disagreeing with you on whether government spending and tax levels should be plus/minus 200 basis points is evil?
I think you need your moral compass checked out
A feeble point, I can cause you to die horribly by altering the contents of the food you eat or the air you breathe by 20 or indeed 2 basis points. Let's include foreseeable consequences in our analysis
You're having a bad morning.
Nope.
A disagreement on tax policy and spending priorities in a democratic system is not “evil”. In fact it is profoundly unhelpful and even dangerous to characterise legitimate political difference in such a hyperbolic way.
Invading an independent country, slaughtering civilians and deporting their kids is evil.
You can kill thousands with a tax policy, you can immiserate millions by causing inflation. Of course that can be seen as evil. Especially if you knew it was a possible outcome, and did little to stop it. The idea that economic policies are some theoretical proposition that doesn't have material impact on people is absurd.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
99% of doctors do not recommend bleach for covid.
For cleaning surfaces yes. For intravenous use please see my colleague Dr Shipman.
I see the FTSE 250 is now down by a third from Febrary. Builders particularly hard hit.
At some point it will be time to buy in. The trouble is that time will be when things look their worst!
Yes, eventually it becomes buying opportunity.
Great if you are buying in dollars.
Just buy the bits of the FTSE you want.
Will be travelling to the UK in December for a few weeks, work and family. Trying to work out when to change a pile of dollars, $1.10 seems to be the sticky point at the moment.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h The govt currently has no credible plan for reducing the fiscal exposure of the energy package if energy prices don't fall. It urgently needs to do that if it is to restore market confidence.
Lili is getting there, and it is great to have some company over here in the tiny grouping that can see the bleeding obvious no one else apparently can see, but it’s happening too slowly for government to act quickly,
The cost of the Energy Cap is fading into insignificance against the cost of the Trussterfuck. £10 billion a year in additional borrowing costs (money that could suppport services according to IFS). Pound less valuable than it would be. Interest rates for the rest of us are also higher, reducing investment and wealth.
At least the Energy Cap has value in keeping costs manageable. Trussterfuck no value at all.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
If everything we know about him doesn't convince you of this, fine, we potentially have an entire discovery process in a trial coming up that will almost certainly show it.
Being extremely wealthy is not a sign of intelligence. It is a sign that you a) probably started out life if not already extremely wealthy than at least well off and b) you don't have too many scruples about how you make more money. Neither of those things need much intelligence. Growing up with diamonds in your pocket will more likely than not allow you to grow up into a man with lots of money.
Almost the very faintest trace of chippiness showing up here. Brunel, Carnegie, Sugar, Ratcliffe.
As for Brunel, didn't he sometimes do his best to impoverish the stockholders of the companies for which he worked? Broad gauge, Great Eastern, atmospheric railway ... whereas Locke, for instance, was a far more reliable civil engineer.
Non-wealthy background was my only point.
I'm not saying it is impossible to become wealthy without wealth, I'm just saying it's a lot easier to become extremely wealthy when you're already quite wealthy. And that talent is not necessarily a prerequisite for wealth or even success.
Indeed luck matters a lot. Simply being in the right place at the right time. Many entrepreneurs fail for that reason alone.
A word used only by fanatics or those prone to exaggeration. Liz is incompetent and has an inflated opinion of her own ability, but that's not unusual in politicians and journalists.
She's not evil, she's a very naughty girl.
Hmm.
I generally would only use that word for someone who inflicts direct, deliberate, and severe harm on other humans.
Bonus points if they get kicks out of it.
I think there are better words to describe liz and her band of fellow idiots.
However, I don’t have a problem with describing her ideology as “evil”
In my experience, it’s a good lesson for life.
Use these kind of emotive, absolutist words to describe ideas or behaviours. Not actual people. Separate the person from the idea/behaviour.
Gets you into far fewer unwinnable fights. More likely to win people over to your side of an argument, too.
Disagreeing with you on whether government spending and tax levels should be plus/minus 200 basis points is evil?
I think you need your moral compass checked out
A feeble point, I can cause you to die horribly by altering the contents of the food you eat or the air you breathe by 20 or indeed 2 basis points. Let's include foreseeable consequences in our analysis
You're having a bad morning.
Nope.
A disagreement on tax policy and spending priorities in a democratic system is not “evil”. In fact it is profoundly unhelpful and even dangerous to characterise legitimate political difference in such a hyperbolic way.
Invading an independent country, slaughtering civilians and deporting their kids is evil.
You can kill thousands with a tax policy, you can immiserate millions by causing inflation. Of course that can be seen as evil. Especially if you knew it was a possible outcome, and did little to stop it. The idea that economic policies are some theoretical proposition that doesn't have material impact on people is absurd.
Indeed. There is at least one BMJ paper on the excess mortality arising from a previous administration's austerity policies.
For Sid Meier's Civilisation fans we now have a new lowest entry on the leaderboard to replace Dan Quayle at the end of the game for the very lowest of scores.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
Maximalism = nuclear war
Except that, in practice, it would simply let Russia regroup and rearm, while making sure Ukraine doesn’t join NATO before the next Ukranian war.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
I dont agree that Truss is indecisive. She decided on a cabinet, an energy bill support policy, an economic direction. I just struggle to identify any decision that looks particularly good. And several that seem shockingly bad. So I'd give her a pass on decisiveness. But an epic fail on competence and likeability. And she is weak so some of her bad decisions have already been reversed.
She is indecisive and weak because she made so many stupid decisions and has been forced to reverse them. Remember that every single one of these was billed as essential, that they had no other choice. That anyone opposed was part of the "anti-growth coalition" or even dancing to Putin's tune.
The latest one - she is imposing a windfall tax on the excess profits being made by energy companies. All the way through her leadership she said "no handouts, no windfall tax". Then announced handouts *to the energy companies* paid for by consumers. Now is taking off them any profits over a level they are setting - a windfall tax.
She is in office, but not in power.
I know that you love to bash the government. But the changes on renewable energy pricing genuinely are *not* a windfall tax.
That’s an unusually high tax rate on profits. This is a new price negotiation.” Which shifts them to a fixed return on capital model as with other utilities.
Old system - government pays an unlimited amount to energy companies - a windfall New system - government caps payment thus cutting their profits - a windfall tax
Call it what you want, its another massive u-turn and everyone is pointing and laughing. They will try and dance on a pinhead and call it something else. And the laughter will just get louder and the poll ratings worse.
Its not a u-turn, she said straight away in her original announcement that she wanted to change the pricing system on that.
If you insist on calling black white, by calling something that's not a windfall tax a windfall tax, then yes, sure, she's going for a windfall tax.
But a price cap and a windfall tax are not the same thing. Never have been.
Enjoy the pinhead dance. This will reduce the profits they would have been making off the taxpayer. Its not technically a windfall tax as we're reducing the money we were going to pay them, but it has the same effect of reducing their excess profits.
Feel free to patronise the British public all you want. It only adds to the scale of the Tory ELE. Truss was wrong on this. In every way. That she stridently and sneeringly told the world that she was right and everyone else wrong - especially Rishi - it just makes it funnier...
Great, I'm glad we're agreed its not a windfall tax, now we can move on.
For what its worth, I think a price cap is a very, very bad idea, it discourages investment.
I actually think a windfall tax, with an investment allowance attached to it, would be much better than a price cap.
So this isn't a u-turn, its far worse than one in my eyes.
How's that for pin head dancing?
In terms of their summer positions on the subject, how would you rank Starmer, Truss and Sunak in terms of being closest to advocating the solutions that Truss is now saying are the only tenable options?
Not the small print, but who was broadly right and wrong about direction?
I think all three have advocated/implemented quite different solutions.
Starmer: Price cap (for consumers only), windfall tax (no mention of investment allowance). Sunak: Universal grant (for consumers only), windfall tax (with investment allowance). Truss: Price cap (businesses and consumers), wholesale price cap as well.
Personally looking only at consumers I think Truss has the worst solution. Price caps are the worst possible mechanism to use and she's used it twice.
Sunak to me had the best solution, looking only at consumers. A universal grant is progressive (£400 means more to a poor person than a rich one), not distorting, and keeps in full the price signal to suggest that you're still worse off if you use more energy, better off if you lose less. If a windfall tax is going to exist, it should have an investment allowance. So overall, for consumers, I think Sunak's policy should have been done, but the opposite has been.
However had only consumers been dealt with the businesses across the country would have gone bust as they couldn't have paid their energy bills. Neither Sunak nor Starmer touched this subject, Truss has, so Truss has to get credit for that for being the only one to even deal with the issue.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h The govt currently has no credible plan for reducing the fiscal exposure of the energy package if energy prices don't fall. It urgently needs to do that if it is to restore market confidence.
Lili is getting there, and it is great to have some company over here in the tiny grouping that can see the bleeding obvious no one else apparently can see, but it’s happening too slowly for government to act quickly,
The cost of the Energy Cap is fading into insignificance against the cost of the Trussterfuck. £10 billion a year in additional borrowing costs (money that could suppport services according to IFS). Pound less valuable than it would be. Interest rates for the rest of us are also higher, reducing investment and wealth.
At least the Energy Cap has value in keeping costs manageable. Trussterfuck no value at all.
The energy cap is sensible because medium-long term global gas prices should broadly converge, save transportation costs.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
99% of doctors do not recommend bleach for covid.
Nobody recommends bleach for Covid.
Oh? Don't you remember?
Not so much now, perhaps, but it is still a thing, if not as huge as it was.
I dont agree that Truss is indecisive. She decided on a cabinet, an energy bill support policy, an economic direction. I just struggle to identify any decision that looks particularly good. And several that seem shockingly bad. So I'd give her a pass on decisiveness. But an epic fail on competence and likeability. And she is weak so some of her bad decisions have already been reversed.
She is indecisive and weak because she made so many stupid decisions and has been forced to reverse them. Remember that every single one of these was billed as essential, that they had no other choice. That anyone opposed was part of the "anti-growth coalition" or even dancing to Putin's tune.
The latest one - she is imposing a windfall tax on the excess profits being made by energy companies. All the way through her leadership she said "no handouts, no windfall tax". Then announced handouts *to the energy companies* paid for by consumers. Now is taking off them any profits over a level they are setting - a windfall tax.
She is in office, but not in power.
I know that you love to bash the government. But the changes on renewable energy pricing genuinely are *not* a windfall tax.
That’s an unusually high tax rate on profits. This is a new price negotiation.” Which shifts them to a fixed return on capital model as with other utilities.
Old system - government pays an unlimited amount to energy companies - a windfall New system - government caps payment thus cutting their profits - a windfall tax
Call it what you want, its another massive u-turn and everyone is pointing and laughing. They will try and dance on a pinhead and call it something else. And the laughter will just get louder and the poll ratings worse.
Its not a u-turn, she said straight away in her original announcement that she wanted to change the pricing system on that.
If you insist on calling black white, by calling something that's not a windfall tax a windfall tax, then yes, sure, she's going for a windfall tax.
But a price cap and a windfall tax are not the same thing. Never have been.
Enjoy the pinhead dance. This will reduce the profits they would have been making off the taxpayer. Its not technically a windfall tax as we're reducing the money we were going to pay them, but it has the same effect of reducing their excess profits.
Feel free to patronise the British public all you want. It only adds to the scale of the Tory ELE. Truss was wrong on this. In every way. That she stridently and sneeringly told the world that she was right and everyone else wrong - especially Rishi - it just makes it funnier...
Great, I'm glad we're agreed its not a windfall tax, now we can move on.
For what its worth, I think a price cap is a very, very bad idea, it discourages investment.
I actually think a windfall tax, with an investment allowance attached to it, would be much better than a price cap.
So this isn't a u-turn, its far worse than one in my eyes.
How's that for pin head dancing?
In terms of their summer positions on the subject, how would you rank Starmer, Truss and Sunak in terms of being closest to advocating the solutions that Truss is now saying are the only tenable options?
Not the small print, but who was broadly right and wrong about direction?
I think all three have advocated/implemented quite different solutions.
Starmer: Price cap (for consumers only), windfall tax (no mention of investment allowance). Sunak: Universal grant (for consumers only), windfall tax (with investment allowance). Truss: Price cap (businesses and consumers), wholesale price cap as well.
Personally looking only at consumers I think Truss has the worst solution. Price caps are the worst possible mechanism to use and she's used it twice.
Sunak to me had the best solution, looking only at consumers. A universal grant is progressive (£400 means more to a poor person than a rich one), not distorting, and keeps in full the price signal to suggest that you're still worse off if you use more energy, better off if you lose less. If a windfall tax is going to exist, it should have an investment allowance. So overall, for consumers, I think Sunak's policy should have been done, but the opposite has been.
However had only consumers been dealt with the businesses across the country would have gone bust as they couldn't have paid their energy bills. Neither Sunak nor Starmer touched this subject, Truss has, so Truss has to get credit for that for being the only one to even deal with the issue.
There is no way on earth that Sunak and Starmer, had they been elected into charge wouldn't have addressed business energy.
Conversely, energy help for businesses certainly wasn't part of Truss's campaign pitch.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
Maximalism = nuclear war
Again, why do you believe we are heading for nuclear holocaust?
You are working yourself up into a tizzy. Even if a land invasion of Crimea isn't practical, that doesn't mean the entire world has to recognise it as Russian. There are always a lot of potential political solutions.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
You lost me at “Elon Musk isn’t clever”
What Musk is very good at is driving implantation of innovation.
Plenty of people were building hi performance electric cars - as one off, custom conversions. Turning that into a mass production thing upended the car industry, globally. When I worked in the energy business, the car companies were always promising that they would send us a prototype of their hydrogen powered car. Next year. When the time was right. When they’d washed their hair….
Everyone and his dog had plans for reusable rockets and making rockets cheaper. Musk drove actually doing this - and the rest of the world is still playing catch-up.
LEO data constellations have been attempted before - getting one to market, not so much.
This skill has nothing to do with skill in geopolitics. Or any other kind of politics.
I am reminded of the disgusting and appalling remarks by Albert Einstein during the Korean War, to Sidney Hook and others.
Agreed. The "he just got lucky" stuff is bollocks. All successful entrepreneurs get lucky at some point - that's necessary to, but doesn't account for, their success. There's a lot of other stuff that's also crucial.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
Maximalism = nuclear war
Only a handful of states recognised the annexation of Crimea. To gain recognition from the other major powers and normalise relations wouldn't be a neutral outcome but a major win for Putin.
“University of Minnesota medical students swear an oath to "honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine" and to fight "white supremacy, colonialism, [and] the gender binary."
The Bank of England has insisted again that it will go ahead with its decision to stop supporting the bond market on Friday after reports it may extend it.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
Maximalism = nuclear war
Russia don't have any territorial claims on any land in Ukraine, including Crimea.
They're simply invading and conquering, after pledging not to, and can't be trusted not to do it again.
Crimea is Ukrainian and needs and deserves to be liberated. If Putin wants to avoid a nuclear holocaust, he can return Russian troops to his own borders, which includes neither Crimea nor Sevastopol.
Labour and Keir Starmer now have a 21pt lead over the Tories and Liz Truss on the economy
Which government do you think would be better for managing the economy? A Con government led by Liz Truss: 16% A Lab government led by Keir Starmer: 37%
The Bank of England has insisted again that it will go ahead with its decision to stop supporting the bond market on Friday after reports it may extend it.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014..r
That's simply wrong. His "plans" include the recently annexed territories; and enforced neutrality for Ukraine. He's basically shilling for Putin.
The idea that he has any useful part in any future arrangements between Ukraine and Russia is delusion.
Labour and Keir Starmer now have a 21pt lead over the Tories and Liz Truss on the economy
Which government do you think would be better for managing the economy? A Con government led by Liz Truss: 16% A Lab government led by Keir Starmer: 37%
I dont agree that Truss is indecisive. She decided on a cabinet, an energy bill support policy, an economic direction. I just struggle to identify any decision that looks particularly good. And several that seem shockingly bad. So I'd give her a pass on decisiveness. But an epic fail on competence and likeability. And she is weak so some of her bad decisions have already been reversed.
She is indecisive and weak because she made so many stupid decisions and has been forced to reverse them. Remember that every single one of these was billed as essential, that they had no other choice. That anyone opposed was part of the "anti-growth coalition" or even dancing to Putin's tune.
The latest one - she is imposing a windfall tax on the excess profits being made by energy companies. All the way through her leadership she said "no handouts, no windfall tax". Then announced handouts *to the energy companies* paid for by consumers. Now is taking off them any profits over a level they are setting - a windfall tax.
She is in office, but not in power.
I know that you love to bash the government. But the changes on renewable energy pricing genuinely are *not* a windfall tax.
That’s an unusually high tax rate on profits. This is a new price negotiation.” Which shifts them to a fixed return on capital model as with other utilities.
Old system - government pays an unlimited amount to energy companies - a windfall New system - government caps payment thus cutting their profits - a windfall tax
Call it what you want, its another massive u-turn and everyone is pointing and laughing. They will try and dance on a pinhead and call it something else. And the laughter will just get louder and the poll ratings worse.
Its not a u-turn, she said straight away in her original announcement that she wanted to change the pricing system on that.
If you insist on calling black white, by calling something that's not a windfall tax a windfall tax, then yes, sure, she's going for a windfall tax.
But a price cap and a windfall tax are not the same thing. Never have been.
Enjoy the pinhead dance. This will reduce the profits they would have been making off the taxpayer. Its not technically a windfall tax as we're reducing the money we were going to pay them, but it has the same effect of reducing their excess profits.
Feel free to patronise the British public all you want. It only adds to the scale of the Tory ELE. Truss was wrong on this. In every way. That she stridently and sneeringly told the world that she was right and everyone else wrong - especially Rishi - it just makes it funnier...
Great, I'm glad we're agreed its not a windfall tax, now we can move on.
For what its worth, I think a price cap is a very, very bad idea, it discourages investment.
I actually think a windfall tax, with an investment allowance attached to it, would be much better than a price cap.
So this isn't a u-turn, its far worse than one in my eyes.
How's that for pin head dancing?
In terms of their summer positions on the subject, how would you rank Starmer, Truss and Sunak in terms of being closest to advocating the solutions that Truss is now saying are the only tenable options?
Not the small print, but who was broadly right and wrong about direction?
I think all three have advocated/implemented quite different solutions.
Starmer: Price cap (for consumers only), windfall tax (no mention of investment allowance). Sunak: Universal grant (for consumers only), windfall tax (with investment allowance). Truss: Price cap (businesses and consumers), wholesale price cap as well.
Personally looking only at consumers I think Truss has the worst solution. Price caps are the worst possible mechanism to use and she's used it twice.
Sunak to me had the best solution, looking only at consumers. A universal grant is progressive (£400 means more to a poor person than a rich one), not distorting, and keeps in full the price signal to suggest that you're still worse off if you use more energy, better off if you lose less. If a windfall tax is going to exist, it should have an investment allowance. So overall, for consumers, I think Sunak's policy should have been done, but the opposite has been.
However had only consumers been dealt with the businesses across the country would have gone bust as they couldn't have paid their energy bills. Neither Sunak nor Starmer touched this subject, Truss has, so Truss has to get credit for that for being the only one to even deal with the issue.
There is no way on earth that Sunak and Starmer, had they been elected into charge wouldn't have addressed business energy.
Conversely, energy help for businesses certainly wasn't part of Truss's campaign pitch.
Indeed, but the question was asked how what is done relates to what was said in the summer, which is why I broke it down the way I did. Truss's campaign pitch was vague, help would be offered but she never specified what. Hence I've filled in her blank sheet of paper with the policy she eventually did.
Looking at consumers only I think Sunak's position is the best personally, Truss has the worst one. Starmer's proposal is quite close to Truss's, and so quite bad too in my eyes.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
I mean, your thought process folds at the first hurdle. I know many people like the Galt like image Musk presents, but he isn't clever, or particularly influential (beyond his capital, at least). He invested in Paypal at the right time, and has, over time, moved his money into companies of interest and potentially played the markets to make his shares go up. He is a high class con man, which to be fair most rich people are.
Whilst this may be what peace has to look like, if it is true that it is coming through the likes of men like Musk it shows something is deeply broken in democratic states - one awful rich guy is the go between the head of a kleptocracy and the rest of the world... Yay...
A man who has the world's most valuable electric vehicle brand and created a company that landed rockets (Something never done before) is not clever ???
He also bought-not bought-bought Twitter for $44bn. So perhaps it's 2-1 in score terms.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
I suspect Mogg is excruciatingly smarmy and patronising every morning.
You find it “encouraging”, that one of the richest and most influential men in the world now appears to be shilling for Putin?
Yes - and seriously
IF this story is true it means
1. Someone clever and influential in the West is talking peace with Putin: good 2. That means Putin can be tempted to compromise 3. It reveals a genuine Putin red line: Crimea 4. Putin isn’t minded to go nuclear any time soon
Peace - if it happens - will be something like this. Global recognition that Crimea is Russian. Everywhere else Putin loses and Ukraine wins
Putin is humiliated but survives and can claim one minor victory: Crimea. Ukraine survives, is rebuilt, and can claim a famous victory. Defeating its much larger neighbour
If peace ever comes, it will look something like this
Except that Crimea is Ukranian, and that Putin’s idea of “Peace” gives him Crimea and a a couple of hundred thousand square miles of Ukraine.
Any deal for actual peace, requires Russians to go back to Russia, to repair the damage they’ve done to Ukraine, and to let Ukraine be sovereign in the future.
Crimea should become a separate independent nation, with a (fixed on this point) constitution that says it is neutral and no third party can base any military units there.
Should appeal to Putin's "If I can't have it nobody can have it" mentality.
Whatever happens it would need massive investment. If it comes from the West, then it would be Western aligned which is what Putin wouldn't want.
Putin could reinvest into Crimea all those windfall tens of billions he has had from Europe for his energy.
Oh, sorry, he needs those to rebuild his destroyed military? Hmmm....tricky then.
Starmer will "reluctantly" stick up tax. Noone will care.
Yes corporation tax will undoubtedly rise but really he needs to take a very long look at state pension reform and income tax/NI reform.
In theory what you'd want to do is stop giving the state pension to the top third, no change for the middle third and a 50% increase for the bottom third so that a retired couple living off the state pension are able to have a reasonable standard of living but the state isn't subsidising the shopping habits of those who have £50k+ private income in retirement.
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
Oh, well if 99% of commentators are saying something, why should any of us look at the facts and take an informed view?
This is the flipside of the govt's argument that it's all about global market instability - the fact global markets are unstable made it a *terrible time* to launch £45bn of unfunded tax cuts. https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1580132329955393536
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h The govt currently has no credible plan for reducing the fiscal exposure of the energy package if energy prices don't fall. It urgently needs to do that if it is to restore market confidence.
Lili is getting there, and it is great to have some company over here in the tiny grouping that can see the bleeding obvious no one else apparently can see, but it’s happening too slowly for government to act quickly,
JRM was excruciatingly smarmy and patronising on R4 this morning. He ended up accusing the interviewer of being in breach of the BBC Charter because she had the temerity to suggest that there was a link between the 'mini-budget' and the subsequent market turmoil. He denied any such link. The BBC is, of course, another enemy within and part of the anti-growth coalition.
I'm not sure that JRM is right, and the BBC (and 99% of commentators) wrong on this. He's insufferable.
He so is. And his much vaunted "politeness" is nothing of the sort, it's just another supercilious class war putdown technique. I'm afraid I can't listen to him without wishing him harm on a personal level. Nothing physical, I don't mean that, I'm not a monster, but a complete loss of wealth and status and the misery and sense of humiliation that (I sense) would flow from this.
There is a good deconstruction of the JRM 'act' in the London review of books from a few years ago. You might find it quite satisfying to read.
The Bank of England has insisted again that it will go ahead with its decision to stop supporting the bond market on Friday after reports it may extend it.
This, recently from the ICAEW, is as clear an account (though I still struggle) as I have come across of the nature of UK public debt with figures and a sort of explanation.
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
I dont agree that Truss is indecisive. She decided on a cabinet, an energy bill support policy, an economic direction. I just struggle to identify any decision that looks particularly good. And several that seem shockingly bad. So I'd give her a pass on decisiveness. But an epic fail on competence and likeability. And she is weak so some of her bad decisions have already been reversed.
She is indecisive and weak because she made so many stupid decisions and has been forced to reverse them. Remember that every single one of these was billed as essential, that they had no other choice. That anyone opposed was part of the "anti-growth coalition" or even dancing to Putin's tune.
The latest one - she is imposing a windfall tax on the excess profits being made by energy companies. All the way through her leadership she said "no handouts, no windfall tax". Then announced handouts *to the energy companies* paid for by consumers. Now is taking off them any profits over a level they are setting - a windfall tax.
She is in office, but not in power.
I know that you love to bash the government. But the changes on renewable energy pricing genuinely are *not* a windfall tax.
That’s an unusually high tax rate on profits. This is a new price negotiation.” Which shifts them to a fixed return on capital model as with other utilities.
Old system - government pays an unlimited amount to energy companies - a windfall New system - government caps payment thus cutting their profits - a windfall tax
Call it what you want, its another massive u-turn and everyone is pointing and laughing. They will try and dance on a pinhead and call it something else. And the laughter will just get louder and the poll ratings worse.
Its not a u-turn, she said straight away in her original announcement that she wanted to change the pricing system on that.
If you insist on calling black white, by calling something that's not a windfall tax a windfall tax, then yes, sure, she's going for a windfall tax.
But a price cap and a windfall tax are not the same thing. Never have been.
Enjoy the pinhead dance. This will reduce the profits they would have been making off the taxpayer. Its not technically a windfall tax as we're reducing the money we were going to pay them, but it has the same effect of reducing their excess profits.
Feel free to patronise the British public all you want. It only adds to the scale of the Tory ELE. Truss was wrong on this. In every way. That she stridently and sneeringly told the world that she was right and everyone else wrong - especially Rishi - it just makes it funnier...
Great, I'm glad we're agreed its not a windfall tax, now we can move on.
For what its worth, I think a price cap is a very, very bad idea, it discourages investment.
I actually think a windfall tax, with an investment allowance attached to it, would be much better than a price cap.
So this isn't a u-turn, its far worse than one in my eyes.
How's that for pin head dancing?
In terms of their summer positions on the subject, how would you rank Starmer, Truss and Sunak in terms of being closest to advocating the solutions that Truss is now saying are the only tenable options?
Not the small print, but who was broadly right and wrong about direction?
I think all three have advocated/implemented quite different solutions.
Starmer: Price cap (for consumers only), windfall tax (no mention of investment allowance). Sunak: Universal grant (for consumers only), windfall tax (with investment allowance). Truss: Price cap (businesses and consumers), wholesale price cap as well.
Personally looking only at consumers I think Truss has the worst solution. Price caps are the worst possible mechanism to use and she's used it twice.
Sunak to me had the best solution, looking only at consumers. A universal grant is progressive (£400 means more to a poor person than a rich one), not distorting, and keeps in full the price signal to suggest that you're still worse off if you use more energy, better off if you lose less. If a windfall tax is going to exist, it should have an investment allowance. So overall, for consumers, I think Sunak's policy should have been done, but the opposite has been.
However had only consumers been dealt with the businesses across the country would have gone bust as they couldn't have paid their energy bills. Neither Sunak nor Starmer touched this subject, Truss has, so Truss has to get credit for that for being the only one to even deal with the issue.
There is no way on earth that Sunak and Starmer, had they been elected into charge wouldn't have addressed business energy.
Conversely, energy help for businesses certainly wasn't part of Truss's campaign pitch.
Indeed, but the question was asked how what is done relates to what was said in the summer, which is why I broke it down the way I did. Truss's campaign pitch was vague, help would be offered but she never specified what. Hence I've filled in her blank sheet of paper with the policy she eventually did.
Looking at consumers only I think Sunak's position is the best personally, Truss has the worst one. Starmer's proposal is quite close to Truss's, and so quite bad too in my eyes.
Can you talk us through what Truss is actually doing on business energy? There is an element of can kicking isn’t there, with a 6 month cliff edge, which doesn’t help business plan, followed by a judgement of Solomon on who will and won’t get some further help?
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Of the three Gates is almost certainly the smartest. People who have worked closely with him have often commented on his surprising depth and breadth of understanding of their work. They go into meetings thinking "I'm the expert here" and come out thinking "how the hell does he know so much about my work?"
Except that, in practice, it would simply let Russia regroup and rearm, while making sure Ukraine doesn’t join NATO before the next Ukranian war.
It's very hard for Ukraine to joing NATO unless they resolve their differences with Russia.
The NATO accession process is: PFP -> ID -> MAP -> AP -> Ratification
Ukraine have been stuck in ID for 16 years and they can only get to MAP if they "peacefully resolve all outstanding territorial disputes". NATO could change its accession criteria to let them with their existing contretemps ongoing but that is a far higher bar to clear than normal ratification.
Starmer will "reluctantly" stick up tax. Noone will care.
Yes corporation tax will undoubtedly rise but really he needs to take a very long look at state pension reform and income tax/NI reform.
In theory what you'd want to do is stop giving the state pension to the top third, no change for the middle third and a 50% increase for the bottom third so that a retired couple living off the state pension are able to have a reasonable standard of living but the state isn't subsidising the shopping habits of those who have £50k+ private income in retirement.
I don't agree with abolishing the state pension to the top third, more means testing isn't the solution, universality is better.
But fixing income tax/NI reform would solve the same problem. The retired couple would continue to get their pension, but would and should be taxed in full on all of their income at the same tax rates as anyone who is actually working for that income is expected to pay.
Except that, in practice, it would simply let Russia regroup and rearm, while making sure Ukraine doesn’t join NATO before the next Ukranian war.
It's very hard for Ukraine to joing NATO unless they resolve their differences with Russia.
The NATO accession process is: PFP -> ID -> MAP -> AP -> Ratification
Ukraine have been stuck in ID for 16 years and they can only get to MAP if they "peacefully resolve all outstanding territorial disputes". NATO could change its accession criteria to let them with their existing contretemps ongoing but that is a far higher bar to clear than normal ratification.
All the more reason for them to win this war.
Kick Russia out of Crimea and the rest of the territories that it is occupying and the dispute is resolved.
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h The govt currently has no credible plan for reducing the fiscal exposure of the energy package if energy prices don't fall. It urgently needs to do that if it is to restore market confidence.
Lili is getting there, and it is great to have some company over here in the tiny grouping that can see the bleeding obvious no one else apparently can see, but it’s happening too slowly for government to act quickly,
He was readable during the pandemic, I'll say that for him.
Lili has moved to the correct place to be, on the wrong energy bailout plan being real cause of the crisis, not the growth budget, so he’s now ahead of about 98% of PB who are slow to catch up.
Shit. Next you'll be telling me Jeff Bezos won't be personally delivering my packages. And Bill Gates isn't personally installing software onto PCs.
Well, quite. These people didn't get rich because they were brilliant - they were in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, started out already with a lot of money.
Bezos had the bright idea of "shopping but on the internet" and just happened to have the money up front to get their first and do it at a price that undercut competitors in the short term, allowing him to monopolise in the long term when his competitors went bust.
Gates benefited from the early wild west of internet culture and then became a crusader for intellectual property, lifting the drawbridge behind him. He also had parents wealthy enough to make sure his school had an early PC for them to use. Oh, and also he dabbled in monopoly.
Again, not a lot of genius here - good ideas and products, but more luck, and up front cash, alongside the ability to make losses in the short term because they were already comfy compared to competitors who couldn't afford that.
Musk is the same. He put his money into things that made more money, and took the credit for it. Woop de doo.
Well, in terms of intelligence, you’ve successfully proved that you’re a fucking idiot. So there’s that
A mistake that intelligent people so often make is thinking they are good at everything. The current PM and CoE are both highly intelligent, just severely deficient in other skills like empathy and communication, hence their current poor performance. I suspect Musk is similar. Once outside the entrepreneurial domain he is clueless.
This is fair. Musk can be a clueless fool outside business. He’s often a prick on Twitter. The Thai cave rescue thing…
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
It’s just that his “landing zone” is exactly what Russia wants, and might as well be on Mars (maybe Elon will understand that?) as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
No, his plans imply Russia giving up any new territorial claims on Ukraine, other than Crimea, which it possessed back in 2014
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
Maximalism = nuclear war
Except that, in practice, it would simply let Russia regroup and rearm, while making sure Ukraine doesn’t join NATO before the next Ukranian war.
I don't see any long term 'peace agreement' without Ukraine (or what is left of it) either joining NATO or there being an alternative defensive alliance of all the countries that border Russia in Eastern Europe. All other 'security guarantees' have proved useless.
That’s back to the level it was when the BoE launched their post-budget special monetary operation.
No surprise. The Bank's so called special operation has been buying all of just over £5 billion in bonds.
Meanwhile the Bank is still signalling that its planning on selling just over £80 billion in bonds.
Of course markets look to the future.
If the Bank wants to stabilise the market it doesn't need to be messing around in high profile attention seeking for Andrew Bailey on relatively small purchases of bonds, it needs to take Quantitative Tightening off the table.
Starmer will "reluctantly" stick up tax. Noone will care.
Yes corporation tax will undoubtedly rise but really he needs to take a very long look at state pension reform and income tax/NI reform.
In theory what you'd want to do is stop giving the state pension to the top third, no change for the middle third and a 50% increase for the bottom third so that a retired couple living off the state pension are able to have a reasonable standard of living but the state isn't subsidising the shopping habits of those who have £50k+ private income in retirement.
I don't agree with abolishing the state pension to the top third, more means testing isn't the solution, universality is better.
But fixing income tax/NI reform would solve the same problem. The retired couple would continue to get their pension, but would and should be taxed in full on all of their income at the same tax rates as anyone who is actually working for that income is expected to pay.
It amounts to the same thing, I'd just do it with a taper. Means testing is not as difficult as it used to be because HMRC has a view on basically all the money moving anywhere now.
JRM comments on mini-budget merely an affirmation of government’s position throughout- which is that the mini-budget was not responsible for the chaos in mortgage markets and financial instability. This is self-evidently not the case. BoE has effectively confirmed as much. https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1580136705104887808
Two problems with this line
1) economic: it sends a signal to the markets that govt doesn’t understand the problem and makes them more jittery still. 2) political: all the polling shows the public absolutely blame the govt and this line won’t work, risks making situ worse.
this 20 year gilt was one type of Government borrowing the BoE was willing to buy (up until Friday) as part of its emergency operations… its now at 5.07% - highest level since May 2004, ie for over 18 years https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1580137451963629569/photo/1
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
So Liz Truss who became Prime Minister on 8 September 2022, promising to reverse Sunak's tax rises because she said they were an impediment to growth, is failing because there was negative growth in August 2022?
I suggest you look at a calendar and figure out what's wrong with your thesis.
This point from @helentbiz is so simple, but so crucial. Businesses don’t work any of the things @trussliz@Jacob_Rees_Mogg think should have them running palms with glee. On the contrary. It has bosses 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
That’s back to the level it was when the BoE launched their post-budget special monetary operation.
No surprise. The Bank's so called special operation has been buying all of just over £5 billion in bonds.
Meanwhile the Bank is still signalling that its planning on selling just over £80 billion in bonds.
Of course markets look to the future.
If the Bank wants to stabilise the market it doesn't need to be messing around in high profile attention seeking for Andrew Bailey on relatively small purchases of bonds, it needs to take Quantitative Tightening off the table.
This is what economists call fiscal dominance - when the central Bank is forced to abandon necessary monetary tightening in order to facilitate the financing of irresponsible fiscal policy. You can kiss goodbye to 2% inflation. Of course this just means even higher bond yields in the future and eventually even more pain to bring inflation back under control. And all this from the party of sound money and responsible fiscal policy.
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
Except that, in practice, it would simply let Russia regroup and rearm, while making sure Ukraine doesn’t join NATO before the next Ukranian war.
It's very hard for Ukraine to joing NATO unless they resolve their differences with Russia.
The NATO accession process is: PFP -> ID -> MAP -> AP -> Ratification
Ukraine have been stuck in ID for 16 years and they can only get to MAP if they "peacefully resolve all outstanding territorial disputes". NATO could change its accession criteria to let them with their existing contretemps ongoing but that is a far higher bar to clear than normal ratification.
UKR is never going to be neutral any more. It is already in NATO in all bar name.
Comments
and it means he has had to big flip-flop, look
https://twitter.com/andrew_lilico/status/1575404466563588096
However I do believe he is very seriously intelligent, albeit gauche and Aspergery (as he himself says), and he might just perceive peace opportunities others don’t. And he has the influence to speak to the right people
I want peace with honour for Ukraine. But I also believe Putin cannot be completely defeated without the world risking nuclear annihilation
If it takes a billionaire weirdo like Musk to find the Landing Zone here, so be it. I don’t care who does it, really. End the war so we all live, and thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives are saved
Should appeal to Putin's "If I can't have it nobody can have it" mentality.
Marc Isambard Brunel; £16K probate
IKB: 80-90K
*In the academic sense.
Just buy the bits of the FTSE you want.
A disagreement on tax policy and spending priorities in a democratic system is not “evil”. In fact it is profoundly unhelpful and even dangerous to characterise legitimate political difference in such a hyperbolic way.
Invading an independent country, slaughtering civilians and deporting their kids is evil.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n15/james-meek/the-two-jacobs
It’s not morally ideal, but it’s better than nuclear Holocaust. And it means Russia lost 60,000 men for basically nothing
Maximalism = nuclear war
At least the Energy Cap has value in keeping costs manageable. Trussterfuck no value at all.
He stopped a coup in America.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/dan-quayle-talked-mike-pence-rejecting-trump-what-story-n1279406
Not sure I see the problem here…
Starmer: Price cap (for consumers only), windfall tax (no mention of investment allowance).
Sunak: Universal grant (for consumers only), windfall tax (with investment allowance).
Truss: Price cap (businesses and consumers), wholesale price cap as well.
Personally looking only at consumers I think Truss has the worst solution. Price caps are the worst possible mechanism to use and she's used it twice.
Sunak to me had the best solution, looking only at consumers. A universal grant is progressive (£400 means more to a poor person than a rich one), not distorting, and keeps in full the price signal to suggest that you're still worse off if you use more energy, better off if you lose less. If a windfall tax is going to exist, it should have an investment allowance. So overall, for consumers, I think Sunak's policy should have been done, but the opposite has been.
However had only consumers been dealt with the businesses across the country would have gone bust as they couldn't have paid their energy bills. Neither Sunak nor Starmer touched this subject, Truss has, so Truss has to get credit for that for being the only one to even deal with the issue.
Not so much now, perhaps, but it is still a thing, if not as huge as it was.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/05/cdc-misusing-bleach-try-kill-coronavirus/
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/health/covid-19-omicron-outbreak-drinking-miracle-mineral-solution-puts-covid-patient-in-icu/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/anti-vaxxers-covid-drinking-urine-misinformation
It is returning, as the next flashpoint
Conversely, energy help for businesses certainly wasn't part of Truss's campaign pitch.
You are working yourself up into a tizzy. Even if a land invasion of Crimea isn't practical, that doesn't mean the entire world has to recognise it as Russian. There are always a lot of potential political solutions.
The "he just got lucky" stuff is bollocks. All successful entrepreneurs get lucky at some point - that's necessary to, but doesn't account for, their success. There's a lot of other stuff that's also crucial.
They are being inducted in the cult of CRT.”
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1579904917761708034?s=46&t=A2SyLegpFTwtEfE_hHhlBQ
DOCTORS FIGHTING THE GENDER BINARY
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63223894
They're simply invading and conquering, after pledging not to, and can't be trusted not to do it again.
Crimea is Ukrainian and needs and deserves to be liberated. If Putin wants to avoid a nuclear holocaust, he can return Russian troops to his own borders, which includes neither Crimea nor Sevastopol.
Which government do you think would be better for managing the economy?
A Con government led by Liz Truss: 16%
A Lab government led by Keir Starmer: 37%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/trackers/which-government-would-be-better-at-managing-the-economy https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1580120489393270786/photo/1
His "plans" include the recently annexed territories; and enforced neutrality for Ukraine. He's basically shilling for Putin.
The idea that he has any useful part in any future arrangements between Ukraine and Russia is delusion.
Looking at consumers only I think Sunak's position is the best personally, Truss has the worst one. Starmer's proposal is quite close to Truss's, and so quite bad too in my eyes.
Zz the city is being bombed in a qualitatively similar way to Kharkiv when Russia was near.
Zz the plant is 75 miles by road (perhaps 40-50 miles as the crow flies) from Zz the city.
https://twitter.com/PhMarliere/status/1580132392509243394
Shows how much English is the universal language now that even messages aimed to France of all places are in English.
Oh, sorry, he needs those to rebuild his destroyed military? Hmmm....tricky then.
Given KK is in Washington, suspect this will be another outing for Philp - who someone described last night as a "baseball bat in a suit"
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1580135467554439168
In theory what you'd want to do is stop giving the state pension to the top third, no change for the middle third and a 50% increase for the bottom third so that a retired couple living off the state pension are able to have a reasonable standard of living but the state isn't subsidising the shopping habits of those who have £50k+ private income in retirement.
https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2022/sept-2022/chart-of-the-week-uk-public-debt
Celtic have been fined over “provocative” anti-monarchy banners displayed by their fans at a Champions League match last month, less than a week after the Queen’s death.
One banner spotted in the Celtic section of the ground during their 1-1 draw with Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk in Poland on September 14 stated “F*** the crown”.
Another read “Sorry For Your Loss Michael Fagan” — a reference to a man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom in 1982.
The Scottish champions have been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by Uefa’s control, ethics and disciplinary body over what was described as “a message not fit for a sporting event (ie a provocative banner)”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/celtic-fined-for-anti-monarchy-banners-p25fb2jjj
The NATO accession process is: PFP -> ID -> MAP -> AP -> Ratification
Ukraine have been stuck in ID for 16 years and they can only get to MAP if they "peacefully resolve all outstanding territorial disputes". NATO could change its accession criteria to let them with their existing contretemps ongoing but that is a far higher bar to clear than normal ratification.
But fixing income tax/NI reform would solve the same problem. The retired couple would continue to get their pension, but would and should be taxed in full on all of their income at the same tax rates as anyone who is actually working for that income is expected to pay.
25yr Gilt @ 5.09%
That’s back to the level it was at when the BoE launched the post-budget special monetary operation.
Kick Russia out of Crimea and the rest of the territories that it is occupying and the dispute is resolved.
They should have done what Rangers did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFgID9PFU44
Obstinate herd.
Meanwhile the Bank is still signalling that its planning on selling just over £80 billion in bonds.
Of course markets look to the future.
If the Bank wants to stabilise the market it doesn't need to be messing around in high profile attention seeking for Andrew Bailey on relatively small purchases of bonds, it needs to take Quantitative Tightening off the table.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1580136705104887808
Two problems with this line
1) economic: it sends a signal to the markets that govt doesn’t understand the problem and makes them more jittery still.
2) political: all the polling shows the public absolutely blame the govt and this line won’t work, risks making situ worse.
this 20 year gilt was one type of Government borrowing the BoE was willing to buy (up until Friday) as part of its emergency operations… its now at 5.07% - highest level since May 2004, ie for over 18 years https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1580137451963629569/photo/1
He’s quite fluent giving the occasional interview in English https://youtube.com/watch?v=b_aLROw98NA
I suggest you look at a calendar and figure out what's wrong with your thesis.
https://www.ft.com/content/0c8374b3-bce4-4da6-88b5-121c53c4f118 https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1580138480944173056/photo/1
People did say…
Granted I can speak French.