Whilst we concentrate on the evils Russia is doing in Ukraine, it is sad to note that al-Qaeda have not disappeared. The following is fairly horrific (sfw)
On Brexit, I think it's worth stepping back a bit and thinking about why we have ended up with the relationship with the EU that we have, relative to other European countries. The most important point is that most European countries are members of the EU. Whatever the pluses and minuses of membership, for most countries in Europe the benefits are seen as outweighing the costs. And many European countries that are not members are desperate to join, including Ukraine. Let's look at the European countries that aren't EU members. Ignoring micro states and the countries in Eastern Europe queuing to join we have Turkey, Norway and Switzerland. Turkey isn't a member because the EU doesn't really want it to join. Norway isn't a member because it has loads of oil money and the population thinks that it would have to transfer too much of that to the EU. The Norwegian elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close relationship that protects their money. Switzerland isn't a member because the public think their banking industry might be at risk if they join, and because they have a long history of localised democracy and distrust of outsiders. The Swiss elite wants to join anyway. They have negotiated a very close if rather complicated relationship that protects their red lines. What about us? Our elite also thinks we should be EU members. The public wants (or at least wanted) us outside because of concerns about sovereignty and immigration. The sovereignty issue can be fudged via an EFTA type relationship, although the reality is that while that protects us from ever closer union, in some ways it leaves us with less sovereignty than as an EU member, as it means we will follow rules we have no say in setting. That's just the nature of sovereignty in an interconnected world. I would guess if that were the only issue we would be in an EFTA type set up or heading there. The bigger problem is posed by immigration. As long as we won't allow some form of free movement, we won't have as close a trading relationship with the EU as Norway or Switzerland do, where free movement is not seen as a problem and isn't the reason they are not EU members. That is why we now have the least advantageous trading relationship with EU countries of any country in Europe. That is doing serious damage to our economy and those costs will increase over time as it cuts investment and we lose out on the dynamic benefits of trade. This is the conversation we need to have as a country. Are we willing to be permanently poorer for the sake of controlling movement of EU citizens to the UK? My view is that we aren't. It's a shame the public couldn't have been persuaded of this argument ex ante, but they are coming around to it ex post. My worry is there aren't any politicians brave enough to have this conversation, though.
You fail to see the point of view of most of those that voted for brexit. Yes the economy of the country maybe worse of out of the eu however as they weren't getting a slice of that extra economy frankly why should they care. We are now out we still have high employment the only difference now is those at the bottom end of the scale are now finding their pay rising above minimum wage levels for the first time in a couple of decades. I am talking here of hospitality staff, shop workers etc.
Witter on all you like about fom not depressing wages at the bottom end and causing strain and stress of service.
The evidence of reality says for all the stats you spout you are wrong because now we no longer have it those wages are rising.
Perhaps if the dicks who did well out of being in the EU, lord Wolffson I am looking at you... had instead of trousering all the extra economic gains passed some downwards then we wouldn't have told them where they could stick the eu.
Wages are going up in cash terms but they're not keeping up with inflation so they're going down in real terms, and the OBR expects to see the biggest ever falls in real incomes this year and next. Brexit isn't the main factor but it isn't helping. It's great if low paid people feel like they are getting higher incomes but in real terms most of them aren't and if the economy is permanently smaller then they will feel it ultimately as there will be less money to spend on public services. It's not even clear that Brexit has had such a huge impact on net migration, which is still running at over 200k/year thanks to non-EU migration. We issued over 1mn non EU non visitor visas in the last year compared to 600k pre-Brexit. Leaving the EU won't help working people get paid more in the long run, and people are at last realising this which is why support for it is going down.
And if we were still in the eu they wouldn't have gone up as much as they did which would you rather have out of the following options a) minimum wage with the current inflation rate or b) a couple of pounds more than minimum wage with the current inflation rate. I suspect pretty much any one sane is plumping for b). Going on about inflation in this context is disingenuous as we would have had similar inflation rates if we were still in the EU as evidenced by germany and france etc.
Wages like everything obey the laws of supply and demand which is exactly why Wolffson can't get workers...he still wants to pay minimum wage and with FoM still in place he would be able to and no Brexit isnt the only reason for it. The reason for it is a smaller labour pool. The smaller labour pool has multiple reasons but the ending of FoM is certainly one of them.
A lot of people I know were minimum wage people in hospitality and before the ending of FoM the standard response if they asked for a rise was if they don't like the wage they can quit as plenty of people to replace them. Where was the economic bonus of the EU for those people? Sure people like you, rochdale and Wolffson did ok from us being in the EU, the bottom half of the country not so much
I have no idea if Brexit will make me better or worse off to be honest. In the short run worse off like everyone else because of a weaker currency and higher prices for food, energy and other stuff we import. In the long run I might end up getting paid more if the post Brexit policy is to grow the financial sector, as seems likely. I'm anti Brexit because I think it's bad for the country not because I think it is bad for me personally. If the EU is to blame for low wages I struggle to understand why the EU is home to so many high wage economies. I think it is much more to do with the Thatcherite economic model we've been pursuing for the last few decades, and which leaving the EU will have no effect on.
You though I get the impression think its purely whether the countries economy is better that makes it good for the country. So a serious question for you here for a moment, and the hypothetical is not about reality as we would argue back and forth on that one so just an answer as if its true from you
a) The economy grows by 3% year on year but half the population has to live on governement handouts such as working tax credits with falling living standards
b) The economy doesnt grow but everyone can make enough in wages to live reasonably comfortably and while living standards arent improving nor are they getting worse.
Personally I would choose b) everytime
This implies you share one of my strongest political beliefs - that the main focus of UK governments should be on reducing our level of inequality not on chasing growth. Despite this intertwining of our very souls you have yet to agree with a single thing I've written in my 31,923 posts! It must be the way I tell em.
Just to clarify: you would rather everyone was worse off as long as the rich lost most than that everyone was better off than better off if the rich were to gain most?
That doesn't follow. My point is governments can impact wealth distribution more than they can wealth creation. Also we need to get used to lower trend growth now. This will be less of a problem if the wealth we do have as a country - which is rather a lot - is shared more equally. If we don't find a way of doing this it will condemn many millions of people to increasingly perilous financial circumstances.
Wealth redistribution heavily damages wealth creation. If you penalise the enterprising and successful and give money to the feckless and incompetent, guess what, you'll have more of the latter and less of the former.
Which is what we've been doing for the last couple of decades, and the suprising thing is that we're growing at all.
And yet, Britain’s neighbours are both more equal *and* richer.
It’s a total head-scratcher.
[Citation Needed]
GDP per capita
United Kingdom 47,334.36 USD France 43,518.54 USD
I don’t know where this comes from, but judging from your posting history this is some selective crapola.
The OECD has France ahead by a decent margin, and in any case the relevant comparators should be
France Germany Netherlands Belgium Sweden Denmark
I would omit Ireland and Norway for different reasons.
The OECD has France ahead by a decent margin on GDP per capita? I think not. Though when it comes to selective crapola, comparing the UK to Scandinavian and Benelux micronations certainly fits the bill.
When it comes to medium/large countries in Western Europe there are five reasonable nations to compare between, in alphabetical order:
France Germany Italy Spain United Kingdom
And taking World Bank/OECD data on GDP per capita, the UK is in second place there out of five. Not top of the league, but are neighbours are not richer.
You’re not correcting for PPP, ie you are peddling crap.
That the UK should no longer bother striving to achieve a similar living standard to the rest of North West Europe and console itself that it is doing better than Italy is pretty crap, don’t you think?
No wonder most people believe the UK is in decline.
The UK is not a Benelux or Scandinavian micronation. Scotland could be if it became independent, or just London if it were measured alone, but the UK is not and the comparison is absurd. To include micronations while excluding large developed western European nations is completely absurd cherrypicking.
The UK is a large European country and should be compared against other large European countries and on that measure the UK is the second-richest large nation in Europe.
As for PPP or not, that's a complex discussion, but PPP places a lot of weight upon how it is calculated. But if you're discussing which is the 'richest' nation, then doing so in nominal terms normally makes more sense, otherwise you end up greatly inflating via PPP nations like China and India while deflating developed western nations.
I am talking about standard of living, which is the critical thing for actual people. As usual you are trying to argue an alternative point that you’ve suddenly made up.
Belgium, Netherlands et al are not “micro nations”. Luxembourg is, hence it was excluded.
The original post said that redistribution was fatal to economic growth. Turns out, like trickle-down economics, that it’s an utter myth.
Belgium, Netherlands etc are small nations. Much smaller than the UK. Compare like for like, either the UK with other large European nations, or the UK with all European nations at the least not just cherrypicked small ones that suit your agenda.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
I think that's right. A major problem for the Leavers is that with the ousting of Boris they lost one of the most gifted political cheerleaders of his generation. With him gone who's left to drum up enthusiasm for a project that was struggling anyway? Remainers, who have learnt a thing or two in recent years, will see their chance and slowly, but with calculation, start to pick Brexit apart. I just don't see the hard-Brexit lobby having either the personnel or the political capital to stop it.
The problem is that the Remainers are still selling anti-BREXIT lines as their main pitch.
They need to be selling pro-Europe as their main pitch. X fixes Y.....
Quite. Make a positive case (something that didn't happen in 2015-16). For all their sins, at least Brexit campaigners were positive and optimistic (even if they were wrong).
With a few more good, positive, points, Remain would have won. Not even very many.
I agree. I know it risks being accused of blaming Remainers for the Brexit vote, but there was nothing, nothing, positive about the case for remain. It was all scare tactics and doom (might be considered prophetic, but still).
At least the Remain campaign was honest. The EU is flawed but Brexit will be worse. FOM causes problems but Brexit will be worse. Membership costs us money but Brexit will be worse. No-one was standing on the Cliffs of Dover singing Ode to Joy because we were not particularly joyful. It's just that Brexit will be worse.
A mendacious pro-European campaign larded with transcontinental patriotism might have worked. But even so, Brexit will be worse.
It wasn't entirely honest. Predictions of immediate recessions, half a million unemployed etc.
Punishment budget...
Both campaigns lied. Remain was inept. Remain should have won but fluffed it.
In fairness some pretty funny commentary on Guido for a change. Cases taking three years to come to trial. Rape reports very high, rape charges very low, rape convictions barely existing. A shortage of 1,000 judges. Are there strikes threatened? Almost certainly. Are there illiterate criminals on early release committing terrible crimes? Of course. Are the police brow-beaten, demoralised and confused? Beyond question. But are they at the same time misogynistic, racist and idiotic and, more often than is strictly desirable, with criminal records? It’s undeniable.
On the positive side, we have the “single case management system”. The new computer system quoted at £236 million is only £100 million over budget which in the history of public procurement counts as under budget. Of course, it doesn’t work, but that is to miss the point.
"The National Grid issued a surprise warning on its capacity for Tuesday night as British households were expected to increase energy consumption during the cold snap.
A 'tight electricity margin' notice was sent out warning of a potential shortage from 7pm.
The National Grid quickly cancelled notice as its contingency plans were activated, but experts said it was a signal of "much tighter days ahead"."
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
French in the dock over the migrant drowning apparently while the UK were exemplary
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
To be fair Strarmer is becoming more of a Brexiteer than the Brexiteers
"The National Grid issued a surprise warning on its capacity for Tuesday night as British households were expected to increase energy consumption during the cold snap.
A 'tight electricity margin' notice was sent out warning of a potential shortage from 7pm.
The National Grid quickly cancelled notice as its contingency plans were activated, but experts said it was a signal of "much tighter days ahead"."
We’re all going to have to pray we don’t get a “beast from the east”
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
To be fair Strarmer is becoming more of a Brexiteer than the Brexiteers
You must be in despair
Yes it is challenging to keep to one's beliefs no matter the current government or set of policies.
Much easier to bend with the wind and embrace every twist and turn as though each successive completely different approach and policy was your only true held political belief.
Oh no, what I have I done.....I have set Leon off on GPT-3000 taking over the world stories.
Yep, and thanks
Honestly tho there are some sober people on Twitter talking crazy talk about GPT4
“I heard GPT4 is so good, it’s much better than me writing my own tweets and/or comments.
Maybe we should just let Generative AI take over and go back and forth with itself, while we watch from a distance with our non-$8/month accounts. No developers needed at Twitter either.”
"On Wednesday the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill returns to the House of Commons. It contains a set of amendments proposed by Theresa Villiers, a former environment secretary, with the support of Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Damian Green, John Redwood, Tracey Crouch, Alicia Kearns and others. The effect will be to eviscerate the planning system as we know it by making all housing targets set by Whitehall purely advisory and removing the existing presumption in favour of development — in other words, scrapping the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so."
1 - The role of national government in setting housing targets alongside local authorities. There's a particular phrase - is it "objectively assessed housing need"? - that gets applied to a local plan as part of the review process. 2 - A bit obsessed with Tories. Lib Dems have gone full on Nimby to appeal to the 'blue wall'. I see no indication that any local party would be different if they want votes.
Whilst we concentrate on the evils Russia is doing in Ukraine, it is sad to note that al-Qaeda have not disappeared. The following is fairly horrific (sfw)
IT is not in Europe. People won't care in the west.
Timbuktu, in that general region, is after all an expression for very, very remote and far away, even if geographically it is just to Spain and then again.
And, for that matter, Tipperary is really not a very long way at all.
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
To be fair Strarmer is becoming more of a Brexiteer than the Brexiteers
You must be in despair
I'd say that Starmer is doing whatever he needs to do to appeal to votes - hence the virtual reverse somersault on immigration this week from what I understand is his previous position.
Anyway forget GPT-4000, computers can now out negotiate many humans...
Big AI milestone today: CICERO, an AI agent that can negotiate and cooperates with people. It is the first AI system to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy. Cicero ranked in the top 10 of participants on webDiplomacy.net
Scot Gov refuses FOI request for discussion/analysis on whether an independent Scotland would have to *commit* to joining the euro in order to be able to join the EU.
Reason: too expensive to provide that information.
Vote Leave… Brexit is a good idea Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
To be fair Strarmer is becoming more of a Brexiteer than the Brexiteers
You must be in despair
I'd say that Starmer is doing whatever he needs to do to appeal to votes - hence the virtual reverse somersault on immigration this week from what I understand is his previous position.
The question is do we believe him or will all these lofty goals of waning the UK off cheap immigrant labour hit the buffers as so often when we find minimum wage jobs are going unfilled, with the usual stories of strawberry shortages etc, and getting the existing population to do them requires lots of strong arming and causing a load of inflation from massively uprated wages.
As we saw during COVID, the whole model for things like agriculture has become totally dependent on single young people willing to work for minimum wage for 3-4 months a year, 6-7 days a week, living in dorms in the middle of nowhere. And even students wouldn't do it.
1 - The role of national government in setting housing targets alongside local authorities. There's a particular phrase - is it "objectively assessed housing need"? - that gets applied to a local plan as part of the review process. 2 - A bit obsessed with Tories. Lib Dems have gone full on Nimby to appeal to the 'blue wall'. I see no indication that any local party would be different if they want votes.
The Lib Dems aren't legislating so's you'd notice atm. But yes next GE will be them vs tories competing on how much nimby ankle they can show the blue wall.
New - Government is pulling vote on Levelling Up bill on Monday, amid a big rebellion on housing targets which at least 46 MPs are planning to vote to abolish. (Though govt blaming lack of time due to Finance Bill debate) https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1595100644981063680
"On Wednesday the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill returns to the House of Commons. It contains a set of amendments proposed by Theresa Villiers, a former environment secretary, with the support of Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Damian Green, John Redwood, Tracey Crouch, Alicia Kearns and others. The effect will be to eviscerate the planning system as we know it by making all housing targets set by Whitehall purely advisory and removing the existing presumption in favour of development — in other words, scrapping the two core policies that tell councils they have to build, and punish them for not doing so."
It does appear that the primary criticism of the Remain campaign is that it was too honest.
So putting forward a positive case for continued EU membership would have been dishonest? Thanks for clearing that up.
"EU membership benefits our economy and increases our influence in the world."
This was the main message.
You lived through a different referendum campaign to me, apparently.
Different world generally, I sense.
In my world "that thing would be bad" is not the same thing as "this thing is good".
It's a faith thing. When a True Remainer hears anything said about Europe it is either Positive or A Lie. Otherwise you are a backsliding heretic who needs to be purified by involuntary cremation. For the good of your immortal soul.
The same thing with Leavers, of course. Just the exact reverse.
Anyway forget GPT-4000, computers can now out negotiate many humans...
Big AI milestone today: CICERO, an AI agent that can negotiate and cooperates with people. It is the first AI system to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy. Cicero ranked in the top 10 of participants on webDiplomacy.net
Will all of this make life fairer, or give more power to just a few people?
Jesus, it's far worse than I had thought it would be. A mixture of the unnecessary and highly damaging. As that chap says, it is just destroying the current system without replacing it with anything, but removing several core elements.
I like the clause about specific measures to support creation of retirement homes and care homes - a worthy endeavour, to be sure, yet I can assure people that locals often object to such developments, yet in this one case it appears those local objections are not as valid. Hmm.
I don't even know why these MPs are so against building - MPs don't decide planning applications now, and whilst normal people may not be clear on the rules, I don't think they blame their local MP if 50 homes go in on green fields at the end of town.
Anyway forget GPT-4000, computers can now out negotiate many humans...
Big AI milestone today: CICERO, an AI agent that can negotiate and cooperates with people. It is the first AI system to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy. Cicero ranked in the top 10 of participants on webDiplomacy.net
Will all of this make life fairer, or give more power to just a few people?
It is going to destroy 71% of jobs, so there’s that?
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
Anyway forget GPT-4000, computers can now out negotiate many humans...
Big AI milestone today: CICERO, an AI agent that can negotiate and cooperates with people. It is the first AI system to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy. Cicero ranked in the top 10 of participants on webDiplomacy.net
Will all of this make life fairer, or give more power to just a few people?
I would be particularly concerned is a) China wins the AI race (and they have a huge advantage because they don't have to worry about awkward things like data privacy) and b) if i was entering or just entered a white collar career with many repetitive tasks. Industrial revolution 2.0.
So was it Brexit's fault that we had the highest growth in the G7 last year?
Or is it just possible that there is more than 1 moving part to this puzzle?
You are talking about the partial correction to the largest fall in GDP amongst our peers the previous year that left us net worst off amongst those peers.
Yes. the reason for the largest fall was mainly due to this government's poor handling of Covid. But Brexit probably does have a role in us being net worse off.
Whilst we concentrate on the evils Russia is doing in Ukraine, it is sad to note that al-Qaeda have not disappeared. The following is fairly horrific (sfw)
IT is not in Europe. People won't care in the west.
Timbuktu, in that general region, is after all an expression for very, very remote and far away, even if geographically it is just to Spain and then again.
And, for that matter, Tipperary is really not a very long way at all.
It can be a long way to Tipperary, depending where you start.
Whilst we concentrate on the evils Russia is doing in Ukraine, it is sad to note that al-Qaeda have not disappeared. The following is fairly horrific (sfw)
IT is not in Europe. People won't care in the west.
Timbuktu, in that general region, is after all an expression for very, very remote and far away, even if geographically it is just to Spain and then again.
And, for that matter, Tipperary is really not a very long way at all.
It can be a long way to Tipperary, depending where you start.
The dramatic setting of the song, is London (England).
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
Anyway forget GPT-4000, computers can now out negotiate many humans...
Big AI milestone today: CICERO, an AI agent that can negotiate and cooperates with people. It is the first AI system to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy. Cicero ranked in the top 10 of participants on webDiplomacy.net
Will all of this make life fairer, or give more power to just a few people?
I would be particularly concerned is a) China wins the AI race (and they have a huge advantage because they don't have to worry about awkward things like data privacy) and b) if i was entering or just entered a white collar career with many repetitive tasks. Industrial revolution 2.0.
Rumour Twitter has multiple variations of this gem
“Idle speculation that some of the extreme measures taken this week to limit China’s access to next generation chip process technology could be related to scary capabilities of next generation AI.“
🚨BREAKING: Homes may suffer power issues this evening after the National Grid issued a warning on its capacity.
Follow the latest on our live blog⬇️ telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/…
Seems.. worryingly early when it’s not massively cold
Wind is low, under 3 GW, and we're drawing high levels from the interconnectors, but CCGT output is only just under 20 GW. I thought we had a lot more CCGT capacity than that. Have a couple of plants gone down for maintenance reasons?
Scot Gov refuses FOI request for discussion/analysis on whether an independent Scotland would have to *commit* to joining the euro in order to be able to join the EU.
Reason: too expensive to provide that information.
Yes, but if you read the wording of the request, you'll see that it would potentially cover a huge amount of material. I'm not surprised it was turned down on grounds of cost.
You really need to think things out when putting in a FOI request, and try to ensure against as many exemptions as you can, rather than giving them an obvious excuse to refuse, as in this case.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
Totally bizarre language, “fought and fallen”. These people are insane.
1 - The role of national government in setting housing targets alongside local authorities. There's a particular phrase - is it "objectively assessed housing need"? - that gets applied to a local plan as part of the review process. 2 - A bit obsessed with Tories. Lib Dems have gone full on Nimby to appeal to the 'blue wall'. I see no indication that any local party would be different if they want votes.
The Lib Dems aren't legislating so's you'd notice atm. But yes next GE will be them vs tories competing on how much nimby ankle they can show the blue wall.
So if people vote against over-development* their votes should be discounted, but if they vote for Brexit, their votes should be respected for all time? Have I got this right?
*our local village plan passed with a massive majority including several hundred new houses. People will vote for development if it is in the right places.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
I know you hate all that but the issue in the US was enough for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to opine on it. 46 transgender people killed in 2021 there. Only in America, eh?
You'd have a much less stressful life I have no doubt if you stopped doing a @Leon and trawling through twitter to find things to be outraged about.
No one is denying your right to be a woman.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
It does appear that the primary criticism of the Remain campaign is that it was too honest.
So putting forward a positive case for continued EU membership would have been dishonest? Thanks for clearing that up.
"EU membership benefits our economy and increases our influence in the world."
This was the main message.
You lived through a different referendum campaign to me, apparently.
Different world generally, I sense.
In my world "that thing would be bad" is not the same thing as "this thing is good".
In both our worlds I imagine when faced with a binary choice we pick the one preferable to us. Whether we express this as "better" or "less bad" is mainly semantics and depends on personality and mood as much as anything. Whatever - it's not important. "The Remain campaign was too negative" - this is yet more retrospective guilt-driven special pleading from Leavers straining to excuse themselves for voting for something most of the brighter ones now strongly suspect was stupid. Sorry, and let's please not "do" Brexit again, not with the WC on, and with Leon introducing lots of fascinating stuff about something or other, but this is my strong and settled opinion on the matter.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
The whole thing is like Lord of the Flies with transphobes playing the role of the Beast. Basically there aren't any, so you have to a. invent them as here or b. redefine thinking that women deserve a level playing field in sport as transphobia.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
Not if people don't resist them. Sense doesn't break out of its own accord, that's why groups and activists (in many areas) punch above their weight in setting agendas. Of course, one can overreact, and people clearly do when looking for stories, but it is still appropriate to react.
Robison saying she will support Pam Duncan Glancy’s amendment 37 on Equality Act which says “For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Act modifies the Equality Act 2010.”
It does appear that the primary criticism of the Remain campaign is that it was too honest.
So putting forward a positive case for continued EU membership would have been dishonest? Thanks for clearing that up.
"EU membership benefits our economy and increases our influence in the world."
This was the main message.
You lived through a different referendum campaign to me, apparently.
Different world generally, I sense.
In my world "that thing would be bad" is not the same thing as "this thing is good".
In both our worlds I imagine when faced with a binary choice we pick the one preferable to us. Whether we express this as "better" or "less bad" is mainly semantics and depends on personality and mood as much as anything. Whatever - it's not important. "The Remain campaign was too negative" - this is yet more retrospective guilt-driven special pleading from Leavers straining to excuse themselves for voting for something most of the brighter ones now strongly suspect was stupid. Sorry, and let's please not "do" Brexit again, not with the WC on, and with Leon introducing lots of fascinating stuff about something or other, but this is my strong and settled opinion on the matter.
No, it's not retrospective at all. My vote was driven in part by the utter negativity of the Remain campaign and its failure to actually sell the positives of the thing it wanted me to vote for.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
I know you hate all that but the issue in the US was enough for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to opine on it. 46 transgender people killed in 2021 there. Only in America, eh?
You'd have a much less stressful life I have no doubt if you stopped doing a @Leon and trawling through twitter to find things to be outraged about.
No one is denying your right to be a woman.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
"Black trans women are the majority of the victims; they often are endangered by racism and poverty as well as transphobia. But trans men and members of other races are victims of violence as well."
In 1937, the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana proposed the existence of hypothetical fundamental particles that were their own antiparticles. No such particle has ever been seen. One year after his proposal, Majorana mysteriously disappeared. https://mobile.twitter.com/QuantaMagazine/status/1595092266451861505
🚨BREAKING: Homes may suffer power issues this evening after the National Grid issued a warning on its capacity.
Follow the latest on our live blog⬇️ telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/…
Seems.. worryingly early when it’s not massively cold
Wind is low, under 3 GW, and we're drawing high levels from the interconnectors, but CCGT output is only just under 20 GW. I thought we had a lot more CCGT capacity than that. Have a couple of plants gone down for maintenance reasons?
Wikipedia says we have 28 GW of CCGT capacity. I wonder if it's up-to-date.
Oh no, what I have I done.....I have set Leon off on GPT-3000 taking over the world stories.
Yep, and thanks
Honestly tho there are some sober people on Twitter talking crazy talk about GPT4
“I heard GPT4 is so good, it’s much better than me writing my own tweets and/or comments.
Maybe we should just let Generative AI take over and go back and forth with itself, while we watch from a distance with our non-$8/month accounts. No developers needed at Twitter either.”
Oh no, what I have I done.....I have set Leon off on GPT-3000 taking over the world stories.
Yep, and thanks
Honestly tho there are some sober people on Twitter talking crazy talk about GPT4
“I heard GPT4 is so good, it’s much better than me writing my own tweets and/or comments.
Maybe we should just let Generative AI take over and go back and forth with itself, while we watch from a distance with our non-$8/month accounts. No developers needed at Twitter either.”
Has anybody written any state-of-the-art computer programs that are useful to humanity recently?
Thought not.
Erhhh minor things like solving protein folding......
The ability to accurately predict protein structures from their amino-acid sequence would be a huge boon to life sciences and medicine. It would vastly accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery.
"The National Grid issued a surprise warning on its capacity for Tuesday night as British households were expected to increase energy consumption during the cold snap.
A 'tight electricity margin' notice was sent out warning of a potential shortage from 7pm.
The National Grid quickly cancelled notice as its contingency plans were activated, but experts said it was a signal of "much tighter days ahead"."
Octopus are doing one of their Saver Sessions even as I write on my tab from the sofa in my darkened house with most stuff switched off. Thankfully the power-hungry teenagers are out.
It is an interesting question whether Starmer and Sunak have significantly different approaches to the EU, leading to different levels of engagement. I think both men would like to engage more (inevitably meaning concessions to the EU) but are held back in reality or rhetorically because of perceived party or voter objections to those concessions.
1 - The role of national government in setting housing targets alongside local authorities. There's a particular phrase - is it "objectively assessed housing need"? - that gets applied to a local plan as part of the review process. 2 - A bit obsessed with Tories. Lib Dems have gone full on Nimby to appeal to the 'blue wall'. I see no indication that any local party would be different if they want votes.
The Lib Dems aren't legislating so's you'd notice atm. But yes next GE will be them vs tories competing on how much nimby ankle they can show the blue wall.
*our local village plan passed with a massive majority including several hundred new houses. People will vote for development if it is in the right places.
Some places will. I know of villages who have done so too. It just isn't the case generally. Anyone involved with planning could provide incredible examples of things people object to which are very much in the 'right place', in sustainable locations, good transport links, the works.
You seem to be presuming that objections are always reasonable, by saying people would support if it was in the 'right' place, but even the most perfect sites - say some brownfield site with good infrastructure - gets objections. It is very rare letters of support outweigh objections (yes, not unhead of).
There's also the relevant point that people may not have a good conception of what makes a good site. It's certainly true developers will push unsuitable ones, with dangerous levels of housing on unsuitable roads or the like, but locals not only lack the bigger picture, they may have no expertise in assessing the issues - highways is a classic example as planning committees are unable to refuse things on those grounds as experts say the issues are managable. Or issues of flooding - many sites flood, but can be mitigated very well, so local objections are understandable but not definitive.
That's why informed local views are important in shaping things, they pick up a lot that would be missed, but local consent entirely is putting too much on them.
Worth noting that local plans often end up with things people might not like as well, those developing them are forced to make changes to make them adoptable, so may be approved as better than nothing - they often include sites they'd rather not have included, but have to. And where the current system lets them down is they go out of date real fast, especially if the local authority has no 5 year land supply and the neighbourhood plan is afforded less weight.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
Not if there’s “no debate” as Stonewall want and concerns about proposed reforms are dismissed as “not valid” as Sturgeon has said and middle ranking natal male athletes continue to compete and win in women’s sports and children are subjected to hormone treatment, castration and mutilation in the name of “affirmative care”.
That's a nice armband you got there, be a shame if we found some reason to kick you out the tournament.....
England and other teams planning to wear the 'OneLove' armbands to make a statement against discrimination during the World Cup in Qatar were faced with 'extreme blackmail' of 'massive sanctions', the German Football Association (DFB) claimed today.
A few more games like that and no one will be talking about the rights and wrongs of transvestite migrant workers
What a disgusting dismissal of hundreds of people dying to build these stadiums.
I did a job for three weeks in Dubai which at the time had a quarter of the worlds cranes working there. All the shiny new buildings were covered in tarpaulin to hide the blue uniformed workers from the tourists who might have found the sight off putting.
They were nearly all Indians Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Their conditions were known to be dreadful and deaths in the heat from falling off buildings were common. None of the workers were forced labour and there wasn't a football stadium in sight.
It was Just run of the mill capitalism
Philppe Starck said 'if you buy a mictowave for under 50 euro's you know it's been made by a slave'.
I'm glad Tories like you have started taking notice
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
I know you hate all that but the issue in the US was enough for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to opine on it. 46 transgender people killed in 2021 there. Only in America, eh?
You'd have a much less stressful life I have no doubt if you stopped doing a @Leon and trawling through twitter to find things to be outraged about.
No one is denying your right to be a woman.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
Handy hint for those proposing to visit South Africa: DO NOT tell any black African how you stood shoulder to shoulder to them in the great fight, by leafletting Barclays or refusing to drink Cape pinotage back in the 80s. Genuinely a good way to get beaten up, because they regard people who say that sort of thing as interfering, irrelevant, self-regarding wankers.
A lesson here for "trans activists," extreme or otherwise. There is no Act to Prohibit Blokes From Chopping Their Bits Off And Wearing Dresses either on the statute book, or proposed by anyone. At all. So chill.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
No matter what you do or say nowadays it is labelled Transphobia , it is absolutely mental.
Brexit is a fucking calamity and Brexiteers are morons!
I believe quite a few here voted for this madness!
Well, one thing has changed: we're no longer in the EU, so eurozealots like you now have to win a Rejoin argument. Which, given that you were so shit you couldn't even win a Remain argument, has clearly driven you insanse.
The Remain argument was somewhat hampered by Corbyn's Labour opposition providing so little leadership on the defining issue of the last decade that they were practically invisible. Any Rejoin argument would have some kind of actual leadership from the left. For this reason gravitating back towards closer EU status is inevitable surely?
Brexit is dying on its arse.
I put the pivot point as the resignation of Frost (December 21). At that point, mere ideological stagnation tipped into ideological entropy.
Brexiters who care about Brexit need to put some energy into thinking about how it might work. The clear trajectory now is for it to be salami-sliced into meaninglessness and ultimately jettisoned, probably around 2030.
I think that's right. A major problem for the Leavers is that with the ousting of Boris they lost one of the most gifted political cheerleaders of his generation. With him gone who's left to drum up enthusiasm for a project that was struggling anyway? Remainers, who have learnt a thing or two in recent years, will see their chance and slowly, but with calculation, start to pick Brexit apart. I just don't see the hard-Brexit lobby having either the personnel or the political capital to stop it.
The problem is that the Remainers are still selling anti-BREXIT lines as their main pitch.
They need to be selling pro-Europe as their main pitch. X fixes Y.....
Quite. Make a positive case (something that didn't happen in 2015-16). For all their sins, at least Brexit campaigners were positive and optimistic (even if they were wrong).
With a few more good, positive, points, Remain would have won. Not even very many.
I agree. I know it risks being accused of blaming Remainers for the Brexit vote, but there was nothing, nothing, positive about the case for remain. It was all scare tactics and doom (might be considered prophetic, but still).
But scare tactics and doom is at the heart of Conservative campaigning. And the leaders of the Remain campaign were all Conservatives. Those from other parties were marginalised, weren't they?
How were they marginalised? Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition politicians were campaigning daily too.
I thought Corbyn was officially in favour of Remain, while in practice he did his utmost to end up with Leave.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
I know you hate all that but the issue in the US was enough for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to opine on it. 46 transgender people killed in 2021 there. Only in America, eh?
You'd have a much less stressful life I have no doubt if you stopped doing a @Leon and trawling through twitter to find things to be outraged about.
No one is denying your right to be a woman.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
Not happening in Scotland where government fund the extreme groups and are going to make it that anyone can just call themselves a woman at will. Troubles ahead.
A few more games like that and no one will be talking about the rights and wrongs of transvestite migrant workers
What a disgusting dismissal of hundreds of people dying to build these stadiums.
I did a job for three weeks in Dubai which at the time had a quarter of the worlds cranes working there. All the shiny new buildings were covered in tarpaulin to hide the blue uniformed workers from the tourists who might have found the sight off putting.
They were nearly all Indians Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Their conditions were known to be dreadful and deaths in the heat from falling off buildings were common. None of the workers were forced labour
There wasn't a football stadium in sight. It was Just run of the mill capitalism
Philppe Starck said 'if you buy a mictowave for under 50 euro's you know it's been made by a slave'.
I'm glad Tories like you have started taking an interest
WRONG.....there is plenty of evidence that in many (not all) workers were first told to pay a recruitment fee, that they had to take out a loan for (so classic indebtment trap), then their passports were removed from them on arrival. The rules then stated you couldn't change job, but being found without documentation / job you were liable to be arrested ....then there were numerous incidents where local companies just flat refused to pay wages, or not pay them until the completion of the job and workers were being removed from the country.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
Not if there’s “no debate” as Stonewall want and concerns about proposed reforms are dismissed as “not valid” as Sturgeon has said and middle ranking natal male athletes continue to compete and win in women’s sports and children are subjected to hormone treatment, castration and mutilation in the name of “affirmative care”.
I think we are in an overshoot and in a place where the Tavvy and Stonewall are trying to assert their own view of the world but I think that is now in recess and more sensible voices are being heard. There has been movement on minors' treatment and approach; and Stonewall is being increasingly questioned.
I have linked many times to Nick Herbert's article on the subject (he is the PM's special envoy on LGBT rights, whatever that means) which points to a way forward for trans rights, while protecting women's spaces and rights also.
The Stonewall approval process is likewise coming under scrutiny with as I understand it many organisations opting out.
So yes of course there will be extremes of opinion but it will be the mainstream which determines the way forward and mainstream voices as far as I can see are being quite sensible on this.
While you are arguing over comparative national economies, it strikes me that "per family", or even "per household", is, in many ways, a better measure of well being than "per capita".
For example, suppose there are two workers in the US, each earning 15 dollars an hour, which is the minimum wage in some places in the US. Assuming 40 hour weeks and 50 weeks of work a year, each will earn a gross of 30,000 dollars a year. But their costs will be lower if they live together, than if they live separately.
(I don't know how much lower, but I recall seeing a rule-of-thumb that a second person in a household added about 60 percent to the costs.)
I don't know whether such statistics are available for all the G-20 nations, and if they are available how good they are. But that's what I would look for, were I doing these international comparisons.
On Sunday, across the UK, local councils, politicians and media pundits all vied to be pallbearers at a phantom funeral, in order to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance – an annual event memorialising those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. There were vigils, flags on public buildings and grim pronouncements on social media, all bemoaning an epidemic of murderous violence against trans people.
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
If you read the article it’s a range of virtue signallers:
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
I know you hate all that but the issue in the US was enough for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to opine on it. 46 transgender people killed in 2021 there. Only in America, eh?
You'd have a much less stressful life I have no doubt if you stopped doing a @Leon and trawling through twitter to find things to be outraged about.
No one is denying your right to be a woman.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
Not happening in Scotland where government fund the extreme groups and are going to make it that anyone can just call themselves a woman at will. Troubles ahead.
Malcolm you are a voter in Scotland. Vote the government out if it is doing the wrong thing.
Oh no, what I have I done.....I have set Leon off on GPT-3000 taking over the world stories.
Yep, and thanks
Honestly tho there are some sober people on Twitter talking crazy talk about GPT4
“I heard GPT4 is so good, it’s much better than me writing my own tweets and/or comments.
Maybe we should just let Generative AI take over and go back and forth with itself, while we watch from a distance with our non-$8/month accounts. No developers needed at Twitter either.”
Has anybody written any state-of-the-art computer programs that are useful to humanity recently?
Thought not.
Erhhh minor things like solving protein folding......
The ability to accurately predict protein structures from their amino-acid sequence would be a huge boon to life sciences and medicine. It would vastly accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery.
or the AI that search the libraries of all known drugs to suggest a short list of ones that should be trialled for use against diseases...
Or even finding speeds up in matrix multiplications given that huge amounts of technology relies on that...
Ones that can develop pharmaceuticals faster and multiply matrices faster so that "technology" (meaning presumably other programs and machines) can run faster. But what about useful to humanity? Results that have actually occurred and which almost everyone agrees have been useful to humanity. Is there anything in that category?
Comments
Feels like they've not really acehived anything since ditching Boris's attempt at reforms which got Jenrick sacked.
The Baddiel documentary last night on Channel 4 highlighted this in part.
Over time what is and is not acceptable changes.
Both campaigns lied. Remain was inept. Remain should have won but fluffed it.
sadly people dogmatically wedded to either campaign only see the flaws in the other campaign.
“Will search engines like Google be replaced by GPT-4 or any other LLMs in near future?”
“From what I’ve heard, yes”
***
“Disruption is coming.
GPT-4 is better than anyone expects.
And it is one of several such AIs that will ship next year.”
***
“GPT4 will be your best friend.”
https://twitter.com/scobleizer/status/1589870120780042241?s=21&t=s02vR9oi70tYnKm4_blMyA
Cases taking three years to come to trial. Rape reports very high, rape charges very low, rape convictions barely existing. A shortage of 1,000 judges. Are there strikes threatened? Almost certainly. Are there illiterate criminals on early release committing terrible crimes? Of course. Are the police brow-beaten, demoralised and confused? Beyond question. But are they at the same time misogynistic, racist and idiotic and, more often than is strictly desirable, with criminal records? It’s undeniable.
On the positive side, we have the “single case management system”. The new computer system quoted at £236 million is only £100 million over budget which in the history of public procurement counts as under budget. Of course, it doesn’t work, but that is to miss the point.
https://order-order.com/2022/11/22/maybe-the-opposition-is-right-justice-is-broken/
"The National Grid issued a surprise warning on its capacity for Tuesday night as British households were expected to increase energy consumption during the cold snap.
A 'tight electricity margin' notice was sent out warning of a potential shortage from 7pm.
The National Grid quickly cancelled notice as its contingency plans were activated, but experts said it was a signal of "much tighter days ahead"."
Brexit is a good idea
Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented
Brexit is a good idea but badly implemented and very costly
Brexit doesn’t work because of Remainers
Brexit must be fixed because of Remainers
Brexit must be fixed by Remainers
Not much has changed but machines did a slaughter
And your great-great-great-granddaughter
Is just AI. An AGI"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/22/french-refused-help-sinking-channel-migrant-boat-killed-27/
They are fecked
You must be in despair
https://parables.substack.com/p/is-the-realignment-dead
With planning and construction times and costs a fraction of nuclear.
Yet the first PMQs had Rishi banging about his support for nuclear. With Hunt's budget giving Sizewell C the go ahead.
Somebody should be sandpapering the Govt's bollocks over how it has blocked tidal.
And asking probing questions on just why they are SO keen on nuclear.
Much easier to bend with the wind and embrace every twist and turn as though each successive completely different approach and policy was your only true held political belief.
Or is it just possible that there is more than 1 moving part to this puzzle?
Honestly tho there are some sober people on Twitter talking crazy talk about GPT4
“I heard GPT4 is so good, it’s much better than me writing my own tweets and/or comments.
Maybe we should just let Generative AI take over and go back and forth with itself, while we watch from a distance with our non-$8/month accounts. No developers needed at Twitter either.”
https://twitter.com/bznotes/status/1588204059588108294?s=21&t=s02vR9oi70tYnKm4_blMyA
1 - The role of national government in setting housing targets alongside local authorities. There's a particular phrase - is it "objectively assessed housing need"? - that gets applied to a local plan as part of the review process.
2 - A bit obsessed with Tories. Lib Dems have gone full on Nimby to appeal to the 'blue wall'. I see no indication that any local party would be different if they want votes.
And, for that matter, Tipperary is really not a very long way at all.
Big AI milestone today: CICERO, an AI agent that can negotiate and cooperates with people.
It is the first AI system to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy.
Cicero ranked in the top 10 of participants on webDiplomacy.net
Reason: too expensive to provide that information.
https://twitter.com/staylorish/status/1595101053426757632
They could always ask the ScotGov office in Brussels…..I’m sure they would get an answer pretty quickly ….” Yes”….
I’m sure one of the 17 staff members could get an answer - after all, it’s costing £2.5million/year
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202200313481/
As we saw during COVID, the whole model for things like agriculture has become totally dependent on single young people willing to work for minimum wage for 3-4 months a year, 6-7 days a week, living in dorms in the middle of nowhere. And even students wouldn't do it.
It is deep in Uncanny Valley
“AI short film created with text-to-video. phenaki.research.google
imagen.research.google/video/
At the rate of advance in this area of research, we are likely ~2 years out from seeing a major tv show fully created using similar techniques.
prompt in comments!
#generativeart #AIart”
https://twitter.com/alonsorobots/status/1587913514210840576?s=21&t=s02vR9oi70tYnKm4_blMyA
AI is going to make art that is better than human art. Which will be quite devastating for humans
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1595100644981063680
The same thing with Leavers, of course. Just the exact reverse.
I like the clause about specific measures to support creation of retirement homes and care homes - a worthy endeavour, to be sure, yet I can assure people that locals often object to such developments, yet in this one case it appears those local objections are not as valid. Hmm.
I don't even know why these MPs are so against building - MPs don't decide planning applications now, and whilst normal people may not be clear on the rules, I don't think they blame their local MP if 50 homes go in on green fields at the end of town.
Granted it's quite likely that (for instance) the majority of popular music will be generated by AI within the decade.
But is that 'actual' intelligence ?
Can we give AI intentionality (not that t gag would be good idea) ?
Could it spontaneously achieve that in its own ?
Would we know ?
It is going to destroy 71% of jobs, so there’s that?
In reality, these mourners were essentially traipsing behind empty coffins, wailing about deaths that never actually happened. Because, thankfully, despite what the performative shroud-waving would have you believe, there hasn’t been a single recorded murder of a transgender person in the UK for four years. More striking still, when Channel 4’s fact-checking team dug into the data in 2018, it found that in the UK ‘a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person’.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/22/transgender-day-of-remembrance-is-a-ghoulish-spectacle/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-63718823
Yes. the reason for the largest fall was mainly due to this government's poor handling of Covid. But Brexit probably does have a role in us being net worse off.
What does that mean?
Nevertheless, on social media, the Welsh parliament chose to remember the ‘trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen’. Not to be outstripped in the grief stakes, mayor of London Sadiq Khan tweeted in honour of ‘the lives taken by anti-trans hate crimes’. On the BBC’s Thought for the Week on Friday, priest Sarah Jones asked listeners to take the opportunity to ‘remember the trans people whose lives have been cut short’.
Spreading fear among a potentially isolated and marginalised community is far from helpful - especially when the overwhelming majority of the dead the TRAs cite were sex workers in South America. The problem is male violence and sex work, not “Transphobia”.
Rumour Twitter has multiple variations of this gem
“Idle speculation that some of the extreme measures taken this week to limit China’s access to next generation chip process technology could be related to scary capabilities of next generation AI.“
https://twitter.com/sciencestanley/status/1582533034959519744?s=21&t=s02vR9oi70tYnKm4_blMyA
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63717863
That will learn them...oh no it won't...they will be back being total arseholes next week.
You really need to think things out when putting in a FOI request, and try to ensure against as many exemptions as you can, rather than giving them an obvious excuse to refuse, as in this case.
These people are insane.
*our local village plan passed with a massive majority including several hundred new houses. People will vote for development if it is in the right places.
You'd have a much less stressful life I have no doubt if you stopped doing a @Leon and trawling through twitter to find things to be outraged about.
No one is denying your right to be a woman.
Stonewall and the more extreme trans activists I have no doubt will be marginalised in favour of sensible debate and policies.
https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2021/10/20/all-trans-people-killed-murdered-violence-2021-record-statistics#media-gallery-media-1
This is like Frank Drebben killing his thousandth drug dealer, by accidentally reversing over him and learning later he was a drug dealer.
https://mobile.twitter.com/QuantaMagazine/status/1595092266451861505
Thought not.
The ability to accurately predict protein structures from their amino-acid sequence would be a huge boon to life sciences and medicine. It would vastly accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4
or the AI that search the libraries of all known drugs to suggest a short list of ones that should be trialled for use against diseases...
Or even finding speeds up in matrix multiplications given that huge amounts of technology relies on that...
You seem to be presuming that objections are always reasonable, by saying people would support if it was in the 'right' place, but even the most perfect sites - say some brownfield site with good infrastructure - gets objections. It is very rare letters of support outweigh objections (yes, not unhead of).
There's also the relevant point that people may not have a good conception of what makes a good site. It's certainly true developers will push unsuitable ones, with dangerous levels of housing on unsuitable roads or the like, but locals not only lack the bigger picture, they may have no expertise in assessing the issues - highways is a classic example as planning committees are unable to refuse things on those grounds as experts say the issues are managable. Or issues of flooding - many sites flood, but can be mitigated very well, so local objections are understandable but not definitive.
That's why informed local views are important in shaping things, they pick up a lot that would be missed, but local consent entirely is putting too much on them.
Worth noting that local plans often end up with things people might not like as well, those developing them are forced to make changes to make them adoptable, so may be approved as better than nothing - they often include sites they'd rather not have included, but have to. And where the current system lets them down is they go out of date real fast, especially if the local authority has no 5 year land supply and the neighbourhood plan is afforded less weight.
England and other teams planning to wear the 'OneLove' armbands to make a statement against discrimination during the World Cup in Qatar were faced with 'extreme blackmail' of 'massive sanctions', the German Football Association (DFB) claimed today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11457769/England-BLACKMAILED-dropping-One-Love-armband-World-Cup-German-FA-reveals.html
They were nearly all Indians Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Their conditions were known to be dreadful and deaths in the heat from falling off buildings were common. None of the workers were forced labour and there wasn't a football stadium in sight.
It was Just run of the mill capitalism
Philppe Starck said 'if you buy a mictowave for under 50 euro's you know it's been made by a slave'.
I'm glad Tories like you have started taking notice
A lesson here for "trans activists," extreme or otherwise. There is no Act to Prohibit Blokes From Chopping Their Bits Off And Wearing Dresses either on the statute book, or proposed by anyone. At all. So chill.
That is forced labour.
I have linked many times to Nick Herbert's article on the subject (he is the PM's special envoy on LGBT rights, whatever that means) which points to a way forward for trans rights, while protecting women's spaces and rights also.
The Stonewall approval process is likewise coming under scrutiny with as I understand it many organisations opting out.
So yes of course there will be extremes of opinion but it will be the mainstream which determines the way forward and mainstream voices as far as I can see are being quite sensible on this.
For example, suppose there are two workers in the US, each earning 15 dollars an hour, which is the minimum wage in some places in the US. Assuming 40 hour weeks and 50 weeks of work a year, each will earn a gross of 30,000 dollars a year. But their costs will be lower if they live together, than if they live separately.
(I don't know how much lower, but I recall seeing a rule-of-thumb that a second person in a household added about 60 percent to the costs.)
I don't know whether such statistics are available for all the G-20 nations, and if they are available how good they are. But that's what I would look for, were I doing these international comparisons.