I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they try and re-animate the Leaver coalition with a tasty 'Referendum on leaving the ECHR' offer.
Would I be right in thinking you are an accountant? Have you ever considered lion taming?
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
The majority already do. That is one for Suella and your team.
If any Labour leader went down that route the party would implode, and quite right too!
I used to be really worried that at its peak, UKIP would come out in favour of capital punishment and link its return to leaving the EU. Thank God they didn’t, because I fear it might have been quite popular and entered mainstream debate. Perhaps Farage has some principles at some level.
But do the current incarnation of the Conservative Party?
On this, I doubt more than a handful of Tory MPs depart from the consensus view.
But that’s part of the problem. We all know a decent chunk of the public quite likes the idea and we all know that “we” (me, you, all politicians, the whole civil service etc) - the “liberal elite” conspire to never let them get the option.
I worry that one day someone will, and it will just happen, with the next UKIP/reform taking power. I think it would be healthier if someone was out there making the case so it could be argued against and voters won round.
I probably didn’t explain that very well.
I can't think of any precedent for that at all...!
Exactly my thinking. I happened to vote for Brexit, but I’m not so keen on the game plan being used for other things…
Well I thought he should have threatened to withdraw the whip, but I am now thinking that he has played it right. They are now fully emasculated, like 20 odd eunuchs waiting for the next time their Sultan wishes to humiliate them.
Yes, the boy Rishi done well. After some early mistakes, he seems to have found his feet and is turning out to be quite a smart operator.
Pity about the state of the party he leads, but I suppose you can't have everything.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
Those who wish to see a change of government are going to be disappointed to find that populism will largely be abandoned by the Conservative Party (with the exception of the ghastly Rwanda policy) and it will tack back into the centre to put itself in the position of warning against the danger of letting Jeremy Corbyn's apologist become PM.
That would be how I would seek to do it if I were Sunak. And before anyone tries to claim £5 I am not him. Now what did I do with my tax return?
I fear Sunak does not have the cajones.
If you are right, yesterday's cabal of 22 eye- swivellers who voted against the NI bill would now be sitting as Independents.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
The majority already do. That is one for Suella and your team.
If any Labour leader went down that route the party would implode, and quite right too!
I used to be really worried that at its peak, UKIP would come out in favour of capital punishment and link its return to leaving the EU. Thank God they didn’t, because I fear it might have been quite popular and entered mainstream debate. Perhaps Farage has some principles at some level.
I think Farage was probably bright enough to realise that adding that little gem to his argument would have lost more votes than it gained amongst the Eurosceptics. Those who oppose greater governmental power at all levels and viewed that as an argument against EU membership would hardly be enamoured with such an authoritarian argument.
I would not, however, be surprised to find Farage is personally in favour of it. To his discredit.
Well I thought he should have threatened to withdraw the whip, but I am now thinking that he has played it right. They are now fully emasculated, like 20 odd eunuchs waiting for the next time their Sultan wishes to humiliate them.
Yes, the boy Rishi done well. After some early mistakes, he seems to have found his feet and is turning out to be quite a smart operator.
Pity about the state of the party he leads, but I suppose you can't have everything.
I do wonder if there’s something else coming just in time for the local elections, to further tweak the narrative. More with the EU? Horizon? Financial services equivalence? And then on the other, less palatable, side of the equation a few full flights off to Rwanda with EU endorsement.
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
You're right, I should have said "selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of not being able to think of anything more interesting to do than accountancy".
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
Well I thought he should have threatened to withdraw the whip, but I am now thinking that he has played it right. They are now fully emasculated, like 20 odd eunuchs waiting for the next time their Sultan wishes to humiliate them.
Yes, the boy Rishi done well. After some early mistakes, he seems to have found his feet and is turning out to be quite a smart operator.
Pity about the state of the party he leads, but I suppose you can't have everything.
The state of the party he leads is an election strand for Labour. No doubt there will be rumblings against Sunak at some point, and even if well dealt with, a pitch of "Vote Sunak, get the loons, the 1922 committee, the tendency to defenestrate leaders, and God alone knows what from the Tory selectorate" will retain some resonance.
Or, to make it snappier "Vote Sunak, risk getting Rees-Mogg*" (* substitute the loon of the moment as appropriate).
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
£14 bank interest? Wow! He must have hundreds of thousands in the account...
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
Those who wish to see a change of government are going to be disappointed to find that populism will largely be abandoned by the Conservative Party (with the exception of the ghastly Rwanda policy) and it will tack back into the centre to put itself in the position of warning against the danger of letting Jeremy Corbyn's apologist become PM.
That would be how I would seek to do it if I were Sunak. And before anyone tries to claim £5 I am not him. Now what did I do with my tax return?
I fear Sunak does not have the cajones.
If you are right, yesterday's cabal of 22 eye- swivellers who voted against the NI bill would now be sitting as Independents.
Is 'cajones' the Mexican version?
No, I think you are confusing it with pellottas, the Mexican game in which the balls are hit with a stout wooden bat until the prisoner confesses.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
£14 bank interest? Wow! He must have hundreds of thousands in the account...
And he's not sharp enough to have an offset mortgage.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
No. But "giving the people what they want on law and order" is Labours...
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they try and re-animate the Leaver coalition with a tasty 'Referendum on leaving the ECHR' offer.
Would I be right in thinking you are an accountant? Have you ever considered lion taming?
Pretty chequered career tbh but the early accountancy phase of it was probably my favourite. Mastering a genuinely useful craft and at the same time lots of thrills and spills.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with a apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
If she's certain that she wants to go into accountancy then option 3 is the logical best sense unless she's also keen on the "university experience", I would think.
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
No sorry Kinabula, with the caveat that during my entire business life I did once meet one moderately interesting accountant, the truth is that accountancy dullness is self selecting. An advert for the ACA could read thus:
Are you someone who finds themselves interested in matters that most people find boring? Do you regularly send your friends on your course to sleep with your conversation? Is your only real friend The Speaking Clock? If your answers to these questions are yes (within an acceptable standard deviation) you should aim for a career in accountancy. Interesting folk need not apply.
(Only kidding of course...I have actually met two accountants who were moderately interesting)
Bear in mind that whom you meet is also self selecting.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
With the obvious caveat that I don't know her my advice is for her to study a subject she really likes at the best uni she can get into. Then see how things develop.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they try and re-animate the Leaver coalition with a tasty 'Referendum on leaving the ECHR' offer.
Would I be right in thinking you are an accountant? Have you ever considered lion taming?
Pretty chequered career tbh but the early accountancy phase of it was probably my favourite. Mastering a genuinely useful craft and at the same time lots of thrills and spills.
How was the lion taming phase? Did it not meet the expectations?
To be fair, accountancy is not the *most* boring job. Apparently there are four other careers even worse, though apparently 66% of accountants do find their jobs dull:
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
No. But "giving the people what they want on law and order" is Labours...
Fairly frightening bit of populist rhetoric when you think about it.
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
Nothing that a few years of accountancy training can't fix.
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
You're right, I should have said "selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of not being able to think of anything more interesting to do than accountancy".
An interesting (to me) finding there is only a minority of trans people identify as one particular gender. Eg just 12% as trans men and 22% as trans women - the category that just about all of the debate here gets focussed on. Also striking how there's a wide and level spectrum on to what extent trans people present to society as a gender different to that at birth. It's very often not a binary all-or-nothing situation. This sort of real life complexity rarely gets a look-in when the topic is discussed. It's extremely poorly served imo.
Have you listened to that JK Rowling podcast yet.
For me, it was hugely interesting and educational. Saying how Tumblr was instrumental in "where we are" today in the eg trans (but other issues) debate. As the podcast has it, it was a "safe space" where all kinds of, usually liberal, left-wing theories were put forward - climate, ecology, identifiying as a man/woman/cloud, etc - and, in response from counter-theories, in particular from 4chan, then became ever more defensive, eventually withdrawing the right of people to criticise or even disagree with the Tumblr-originated definitions. It is where the concept snowlfake was first used. Which then to a large extent has crossed to the mainstream, whereby disagreement, let alone criticism of various theories has become taboo.
The podcast related this to JKR and actually if you look at every single review of the podcast it proceeds from the premise that Rowling is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
I say "educational" - it is of course only one point of view and I will look out others.
You should give it a go.
Cheers. For me this topic is more about a sense of perspective and practicalities than right/wrong. I have the podcast flagged.
Yes I don't think there is a right or wrong (as I noted upthread to Malmesbury). Both sides are hugely compelling which is why I think it best to proceed a posteriori rather than try to figure out how to put the engine together from first principles.
It's more that, while there are rights involved (the right to do as you please), there are other rights that conflict with that.
The point of good law making is to create a framework for resolving the clashes between rights.
Screaming at the top of your voice that anyone who suggests that there is a clash is a Racist Sexist Misogynistic Homophobic Neon-Nazi Baby Eater just makes people wonder if someone has found the plot you have obviously lost.
I should note that some people were denying there was a problem, that it would ever happen in real life etc... Right until Sturgeon stepped in to deal with an actual example.
Yes there definitely is a problem. Now I don't know the stats but I suspect that this is a "stranger danger" issue - all too real for those who have suffered it, but (could be vanishingly) small actual occurrences.
As discussed, the sensible safeguards should keep people happy.
The law is all about edge cases. 99.99%+ of human interactions are just fine and need no recourse to *any* law, after all.
The problem is the absolutists who demand absolutely no safeguards/limits - If you don't think that violent rapists should be allowed in general population in a women's prison, you are bigot.
There's also a problem in viewing the whole issue from that angle. Eg GRR can co-exist with a sensible policy for prisons.
Yup - but you have to answer that question. Instead of
- complaining that asking the question is a problem. - complaining that it doesn't happen very often. - complaining that the question is sometimes asked by the wrong kind of people. - saying that it is a complicated question and can only be answered by Special People.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with a apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
If she's certain that she wants to go into accountancy then option 3 is the logical best sense unless she's also keen on the "university experience", I would think.
Was about to say exactly the same. I know a bit about those apprenticeships. Obviously she and you should do you own research but they are no joke, and hard work. But if you are sure it’s for you and you want real cash at 18 and to be well ahead of your peers at 22 they are great. You do lose out on the fun of Uni, but is it worth it for todays kids?
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with a apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
If she's certain that she wants to go into accountancy then option 3 is the logical best sense unless she's also keen on the "university experience", I would think.
Well, I agree. And I've sat her down on a couple of occasions to go through the maths of the Student Loan system and in consequence she sees my point. Leave school at 18, earn, say, £20k and study for a degree (equiv) at the employer's expense.
The thing is she chats with her friends who say "of course I'm going to uni" and tries to explain the student loan system to them and they just glaze-over. They haven't got a clue about what they are blindly walking into.
I'm also coloured by the experience of the one year foundation course at a university that my eldest is currently doing - which has not been good and a bigger waste of money I would find it hard to imagine. The university is taking the piss massively, partly perhaps because the £7000+ fees are paid by the government for a foundation year rather than the student. It's been an eye-opening experience.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
You're right, I should have said "selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of not being able to think of anything more interesting to do than accountancy".
People are missing my point. I sense wilfully.
We are all being a little unfair. I probably envy people who can get interested in accountancy. It is, perhaps, the ultimate in positive thinking. It should be admired.
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
Those who wish to see a change of government are going to be disappointed to find that populism will largely be abandoned by the Conservative Party (with the exception of the ghastly Rwanda policy) and it will tack back into the centre to put itself in the position of warning against the danger of letting Jeremy Corbyn's apologist become PM.
That would be how I would seek to do it if I were Sunak. And before anyone tries to claim £5 I am not him. Now what did I do with my tax return?
I fear Sunak does not have the cajones.
If you are right, yesterday's cabal of 22 eye- swivellers who voted against the NI bill would now be sitting as Independents.
Is 'cajones' the Mexican version?
No, I think you are confusing it with pellottas, the Mexican game in which the balls are hit with a stout wooden bat until the prisoner confesses.
I found Jerry Lee Lewis's version (balls of fire) of pelota purepecha, from wiki: A common variant ... uses a ball which has been set on fire and can be played at night. It has a league, several practicing communities and about 800 players across Mexico as of 2010. It is one of 150 pre-Hispanic Mexican games at risk of dying out along with Ulama.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with a apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
If she's certain that she wants to go into accountancy then option 3 is the logical best sense unless she's also keen on the "university experience", I would think.
Well, I agree. And I've sat her down on a couple of occasions to go through the maths of the Student Loan system and in consequence she sees my point. Leave school at 18, earn, say, £20k and study for a degree (equiv) at the employer's expense.
The thing is she chats with her friends who say "of course I'm going to uni" and tries to explain the student loan system to them and they just glaze-over. They haven't got a clue about what they are blindly walking into.
I'm also coloured by the experience of the one year foundation course at a university that my eldest is currently doing - which has not been good and a bigger waste of money I would find it hard to imagine. The university is taking the piss massively, partly perhaps because the £7000+ fees are paid by the government for a foundation year rather than the student. It's been an eye-opening experience.
One of my relatives is currently doing such a foundation year, and she told me that at one point they were asked "why are you here?" and prominent amongst the answers was variations on a theme of "my family expects it". Which is (a) probably exactly what I would have said when I was a student, and (b) a really terrible reason to be at university. I do pre-date £9k annual fees, though.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
I really hope that’s true. Does make one hope they can split the land bridge down the middle.
Gareth Southgate raising to government the importance on limiting foreign access to English football. Frankly they should put a rule in that limits foreigners to 7 out of 11 positions on each team. We can do it now after the EU prevented us for years.
It's interesting to hear the fear that some have of the electorate.
An acquaintance works in social services. When the Rotherham matter began to enter the public domain, there were a storm of emails and messages from Senior People. They were demanding all kinds of plans be made - army sent in, arbitrary arrests, curfews.
For the locals. Not the perpetrators.
They were quite convinced that the locals would get the pitchforks and torches out, and start on the ethnic cleansing.
Yet, aside from a small amount stupid stuff from the usual semi-nazis, Rotherham failed to burn.
Think about that - in the face of the most calculated, designed-to-set-people-off provocation you could imagine, nothing.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
With the obvious caveat that I don't know her my advice is for her to study a subject she really likes at the best uni she can get into. Then see how things develop.
17 year olds choosing degrees based on what they like, without considering employability, is a terrible life decision.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
Gareth Southgate raising to government the importance on limiting foreign access to English football. Frankly they should put a rule in that limits foreigners to 7 out of 11 positions on each team. We can do it now after the EU prevented us for years.
It’s more that doing that would stop it being being the best league in the world. You can have more English players OR be the world’s favourite league. Not both.
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
I once declared -2p of interest on my tax returns.
Sadly it was too subtle and HMRC did not twig I was making an awesome pun at their expense.
An interesting (to me) finding there is only a minority of trans people identify as one particular gender. Eg just 12% as trans men and 22% as trans women - the category that just about all of the debate here gets focussed on. Also striking how there's a wide and level spectrum on to what extent trans people present to society as a gender different to that at birth. It's very often not a binary all-or-nothing situation. This sort of real life complexity rarely gets a look-in when the topic is discussed. It's extremely poorly served imo.
Have you listened to that JK Rowling podcast yet.
For me, it was hugely interesting and educational. Saying how Tumblr was instrumental in "where we are" today in the eg trans (but other issues) debate. As the podcast has it, it was a "safe space" where all kinds of, usually liberal, left-wing theories were put forward - climate, ecology, identifiying as a man/woman/cloud, etc - and, in response from counter-theories, in particular from 4chan, then became ever more defensive, eventually withdrawing the right of people to criticise or even disagree with the Tumblr-originated definitions. It is where the concept snowlfake was first used. Which then to a large extent has crossed to the mainstream, whereby disagreement, let alone criticism of various theories has become taboo.
The podcast related this to JKR and actually if you look at every single review of the podcast it proceeds from the premise that Rowling is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
I say "educational" - it is of course only one point of view and I will look out others.
You should give it a go.
Cheers. For me this topic is more about a sense of perspective and practicalities than right/wrong. I have the podcast flagged.
Yes I don't think there is a right or wrong (as I noted upthread to Malmesbury). Both sides are hugely compelling which is why I think it best to proceed a posteriori rather than try to figure out how to put the engine together from first principles.
It's more that, while there are rights involved (the right to do as you please), there are other rights that conflict with that.
The point of good law making is to create a framework for resolving the clashes between rights.
Screaming at the top of your voice that anyone who suggests that there is a clash is a Racist Sexist Misogynistic Homophobic Neon-Nazi Baby Eater just makes people wonder if someone has found the plot you have obviously lost.
I should note that some people were denying there was a problem, that it would ever happen in real life etc... Right until Sturgeon stepped in to deal with an actual example.
Yes there definitely is a problem. Now I don't know the stats but I suspect that this is a "stranger danger" issue - all too real for those who have suffered it, but (could be vanishingly) small actual occurrences.
As discussed, the sensible safeguards should keep people happy.
The law is all about edge cases. 99.99%+ of human interactions are just fine and need no recourse to *any* law, after all.
The problem is the absolutists who demand absolutely no safeguards/limits - If you don't think that violent rapists should be allowed in general population in a women's prison, you are bigot.
There's also a problem in viewing the whole issue from that angle. Eg GRR can co-exist with a sensible policy for prisons.
Yup - but you have to answer that question. Instead of
- complaining that asking the question is a problem. - complaining that it doesn't happen very often. - complaining that the question is sometimes asked by the wrong kind of people. - saying that it is a complicated question and can only be answered by Special People.
Assessing how often something might happen and the consequences if it does isn't 'complaining'. The problem is more that rational attempts to do that tend to get blatted out by hysteria, hyperbole, illogic and bigotry.
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
I once declared -2p of interest on my tax returns.
Sadly it was too subtle and HMRC did not twig I was making an awesome pun at their expense.
Just seen that autocorrect in my post. I can’t imagine I’ve typed the word “Toynbee“ in ten years. That’s odd. I assumed it was driven by my usage, which is why I now have to be careful if I ever did want to write “ducking”.
Gareth Southgate raising to government the importance on limiting foreign access to English football. Frankly they should put a rule in that limits foreigners to 7 out of 11 positions on each team. We can do it now after the EU prevented us for years.
It’s more that doing that would stop it being being the best league in the world. You can have more English players OR be the world’s favourite league. Not both.
That's bullshit. There isn't a dichotomy here. If you have 7 starters plus subs you can still have 200 foreigners playing each week. The idea is that the 201st space for foreigners is the difference between the EPL being top or not is ridiculous.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
I really hope that’s true. Does make one hope they can split the land bridge down the middle.
The report is genuine - but what it means is somewhat ambiguous, pending further information.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
Retreating back to defend Crimea?
La guerre de Crimée n'aura pas lieu … (c.f. Jean Giraudoux - a bit recondite, but wth)
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
Nothing that a few years of accountancy training can't fix.
Well you do have to be careful, yes. Getting into it is great and then that needs to be followed by getting out of it. Don't just do the first and forget the second.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
I really hope that’s true. Does make one hope they can split the land bridge down the middle.
Certainly makes supplying anything to the west in Kherson Oblast damned near impossible to supply, apart from through Crimea. But that has to go through the pinch-point of Armiansk, which is going to be in HIMARS range.
That means a lot of territory ceded - far, far more than Russia has captured around Bakhmut. Putin can't be happy at that. Another general about to be fired?
Gareth Southgate raising to government the importance on limiting foreign access to English football. Frankly they should put a rule in that limits foreigners to 7 out of 11 positions on each team. We can do it now after the EU prevented us for years.
It’s more that doing that would stop it being being the best league in the world. You can have more English players OR be the world’s favourite league. Not both.
That's bullshit. There isn't a dichotomy here. If you have 7 starters plus subs you can still have 200 foreigners playing each week. The idea is that the 201st space for foreigners is the difference between the EPL being top or not is ridiculous.
It’s the message you send. And the incentive to have a lot of Brits in the academy rather than recruit the best from all over Europe. It won’t be a quick change, and it won’t stop you signing Fred. But you might not have seen Fabregas.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
I would advise her to go for the best university she can get into, where 'best' is a combination of academic and lifestyle considerations, with the caveat that London is not a good choice because it is too expensive. Plus, if she does go into finance, and likes the idea of London, she'll very probably be able to have a great time there as a young professional for a while: much better than being a student in the city and not being to afford to enjoy it.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
With the obvious caveat that I don't know her my advice is for her to study a subject she really likes at the best uni she can get into. Then see how things develop.
17 year olds choosing degrees based on what they like, without considering employability, is a terrible life decision.
To an extent, sure. But a 2:1 or better in any course from a half-decent university is at least reasonably employable and if you enjoy the subject you're surely more likely to get a better grade.
Off topic, but so important I think many of you will want to know this: 'Sometimes in the midst of a crisis it is helpful to go back to basics and ask the most fundamental and obvious question. Like: How the heck is a simple increase in interest rates causing so much chaos in the banking system? . . . . For it was not just the fools at Silicon Valley Bank who underestimated the danger; Bloomberg reports that it took until late last year for bank regulators to realize that SVB, uh, “needed to improve how it tracked interest-rate risks.” Which is arguably symptomatic of a broader problem: “To me,” tweeted finance professor Will Diamond of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, “the biggest culprit in SVB’s failure is that the fed’s most severe stress test scenario in 2022 didn’t even consider the possibility of rising interest rates.”' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/23/interest-rates-banks-inflation-economy/
Let me repeat that: " . . the fed’s most severe stress test scenario in 2022 didn’t even consider the possibility of rising interest rates.”
I am by no means an expert, but I knew interest rates were going to go up, and probably soon. As I assume most of you knew, too. So, why didn't regulators?
(If you don't read Megan McArdle regularly, you probably should.)
I can understand why the more right-wing folk on here are disgusted with Starmer as he triangulates all over the place to make Labour more palatable to voters.
How dare this North London lawyer have the temerity to try to get Labour into a position to win the next General Election? It's a disgrace, that's what it is.
Not disgusted or angry, just disappointed. Saying you will do whatever the public wants you to do is of course one way to election success. It means you can legitimately claim not to have any political ideals or coherent political philosophy, that said.
Watch Starmer squirm if people want to bring back the death penalty for child murderers.....
Will this be in the Conservative manifesto then?
That would be the last resort of scoundrels. I have no doubt the subject is being debated as we write. Power corrupts, and the relentless determination to cling to that corrupt power opens all doors.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they try and re-animate the Leaver coalition with a tasty 'Referendum on leaving the ECHR' offer.
Would I be right in thinking you are an accountant? Have you ever considered lion taming?
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
There's definitely some truth in that.
I know a lot of people who trained as accountants at the big firms, and treated the process a little bit like a Masters in the US. It was an opportunity to earn some money, learn some skills, and then decide where to go on to.
When I was at Goldman 25 years ago, the average starting age on the graduate training programme was 26/27, and that was largely because either (a) people went to European universities and graduated later, (b) had done a Masters, or (c) came from another profession (most likely accountancy) first.
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
£14 bank interest? Wow! He must have hundreds of thousands in the account...
Based on how much my bank gave me in interest last year, he must have approximately infinity pounds in his bank account.
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
I once declared -2p of interest on my tax returns.
Sadly it was too subtle and HMRC did not twig I was making an awesome pun at their expense.
Just seen that autocorrect in my post. I can’t imagine I’ve typed the word “Toynbee“ in ten years. That’s odd. I assumed it was driven by my usage, which is why I now have to be careful if I ever did want to write “ducking”.
An interesting (to me) finding there is only a minority of trans people identify as one particular gender. Eg just 12% as trans men and 22% as trans women - the category that just about all of the debate here gets focussed on. Also striking how there's a wide and level spectrum on to what extent trans people present to society as a gender different to that at birth. It's very often not a binary all-or-nothing situation. This sort of real life complexity rarely gets a look-in when the topic is discussed. It's extremely poorly served imo.
Have you listened to that JK Rowling podcast yet.
For me, it was hugely interesting and educational. Saying how Tumblr was instrumental in "where we are" today in the eg trans (but other issues) debate. As the podcast has it, it was a "safe space" where all kinds of, usually liberal, left-wing theories were put forward - climate, ecology, identifiying as a man/woman/cloud, etc - and, in response from counter-theories, in particular from 4chan, then became ever more defensive, eventually withdrawing the right of people to criticise or even disagree with the Tumblr-originated definitions. It is where the concept snowlfake was first used. Which then to a large extent has crossed to the mainstream, whereby disagreement, let alone criticism of various theories has become taboo.
The podcast related this to JKR and actually if you look at every single review of the podcast it proceeds from the premise that Rowling is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
I say "educational" - it is of course only one point of view and I will look out others.
You should give it a go.
Cheers. For me this topic is more about a sense of perspective and practicalities than right/wrong. I have the podcast flagged.
Yes I don't think there is a right or wrong (as I noted upthread to Malmesbury). Both sides are hugely compelling which is why I think it best to proceed a posteriori rather than try to figure out how to put the engine together from first principles.
It's more that, while there are rights involved (the right to do as you please), there are other rights that conflict with that.
The point of good law making is to create a framework for resolving the clashes between rights.
Screaming at the top of your voice that anyone who suggests that there is a clash is a Racist Sexist Misogynistic Homophobic Neon-Nazi Baby Eater just makes people wonder if someone has found the plot you have obviously lost.
I should note that some people were denying there was a problem, that it would ever happen in real life etc... Right until Sturgeon stepped in to deal with an actual example.
Yes there definitely is a problem. Now I don't know the stats but I suspect that this is a "stranger danger" issue - all too real for those who have suffered it, but (could be vanishingly) small actual occurrences.
As discussed, the sensible safeguards should keep people happy.
The law is all about edge cases. 99.99%+ of human interactions are just fine and need no recourse to *any* law, after all.
The problem is the absolutists who demand absolutely no safeguards/limits - If you don't think that violent rapists should be allowed in general population in a women's prison, you are bigot.
There's also a problem in viewing the whole issue from that angle. Eg GRR can co-exist with a sensible policy for prisons.
Yup - but you have to answer that question. Instead of
- complaining that asking the question is a problem. - complaining that it doesn't happen very often. - complaining that the question is sometimes asked by the wrong kind of people. - saying that it is a complicated question and can only be answered by Special People.
Assessing how often something might happen and the consequences if it does isn't 'complaining'. The problem is more that rational attempts to do that tend to get blatted out by hysteria, hyperbole, illogic and bigotry.
IIRC before the comedy with the bill, you were saying "It can't happen", "They won't do that, trust me" etc.
Well, it happened.
Not having an answer, because it means hurting one group or another is not an answer.
The answer is that, for a small number of cases, self-ID doesn't work. It works the other 99.99% of the time.
I get that it hurts to say so. It is very hard to be progressive and say "you, the persecuted minority, must have a limit on your rights".
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
With the obvious caveat that I don't know her my advice is for her to study a subject she really likes at the best uni she can get into. Then see how things develop.
17 year olds choosing degrees based on what they like, without considering employability, is a terrible life decision.
No it's how life should be lived. With hope and desire and ambition. Plan but don't overplan. Be realistic but don't be in a rush to box yourself in.
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
Retreating back to defend Crimea?
A ‘tactical withdrawal’
“Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.”
Ukraine liberates Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region - General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. 'As of March 22nd, all units of the occupiers' army, deployed in Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have withdrawn from the city', the statement of the General Staff reads https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
Off topic, but so important I think many of you will want to know this: 'Sometimes in the midst of a crisis it is helpful to go back to basics and ask the most fundamental and obvious question. Like: How the heck is a simple increase in interest rates causing so much chaos in the banking system? . . . . For it was not just the fools at Silicon Valley Bank who underestimated the danger; Bloomberg reports that it took until late last year for bank regulators to realize that SVB, uh, “needed to improve how it tracked interest-rate risks.” Which is arguably symptomatic of a broader problem: “To me,” tweeted finance professor Will Diamond of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, “the biggest culprit in SVB’s failure is that the fed’s most severe stress test scenario in 2022 didn’t even consider the possibility of rising interest rates.”' source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/23/interest-rates-banks-inflation-economy/
Let me repeat that: " . . the fed’s most severe stress test scenario in 2022 didn’t even consider the possibility of rising interest rates.”
I am by no means an expert, but I knew interest rates were going to go up, and probably soon. As I assume most of you knew, too. So, why didn't regulators?
(If you don't read Megan McArdle regularly, you probably should.)
That is odd. We probably took this to conservative extremes, but I’ve been basing my mortgage decisions on “the bank rate will be 5% again one day, and indeed should be” for ten years. Should probably have a bigger house, but also didn’t need to panic last Autumn.
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
£14 bank interest? Wow! He must have hundreds of thousands in the account...
Based on how much my bank gave me in interest last year, he must have approximately infinity pounds in his bank account.
I tried to use the banks grid to retro-compute the amount he must have in his account.
This seems to have exceed the size of BigDecimal in Java.
Which in turn has set off a chain reaction of IT collapse through The City.
It’s 2025! and we are washing up, with benefit of hindsight, what happened in 2024 election and why. What did we miss?
Did the 1992 scenario repeated in 2024 simply boil down to Tory’s having a lot more money to spend on it than Labour?
When do you actually start general election campaign expenditure, and campaigning - about six weeks to go?
From early 2023 the Tories were clearly up and running with the stronger election unit - aggressive, busy, working effectively together with mainstream media, getting results, whilst Labour’s was non existent until the bill boards appeared about five weeks to go, followed by the now “notorious” mass balloon release.
So it wasn’t how clever for Tories to sack, disown and politically bury Boris, to already give the voters a government change before the election what won it, as much as it now appears it utterly negated Labours “time for change” campaign - that Sunak was thought of on election day as The NHS. The economy. Stability. Fairness, equality, good, honesty. Reducing immigration. Lower taxes. Helping the country/people. A better Britain. The poor. Hope. whilst Starmer and Labour thought of as Wokeness, higher taxes, Dishonesty, Chaos, Disaster, greed, Bad Money, was actually perceptions engineered, fake and created, cultivated over a long period of time, spending lots of money on it.
And we should have realised this in advance, from those early 2023 heat maps. 🤷♀️
You appear not to realise that the frequency of the responses is related to the size of print. If you did you would have drawn the opposite conclusions.
That’s a pointless post, I do know how a word cloud works.
You don’t actually, as you seem to think the most important ones are the big ones that jump out...
I hate to break it to you, but...
I hate to break it to you, but the power of them is how they help to measure trend, the fools gold is getting hung up on each individual one and how pretty they look. Rather like bad excitement over one opinion poll, look at the trend.
Secondly you need to strip out the more meaningless words. You need it to paint a meaningful picture for you.
And in this particular case, the meaningful picture - the big take out from todays which I have correctly spotted - is how these Tory clouds are getting strikingly better under Sunak, and the Labour one full of so many bad associations for that party. Of course with so much raw data you can spin it however you like as Wulf has done, but on trend he has got it utterly wrong hasn’t he? And all those words I have used that help paint that full picture are actually there on both charts, the sheer weight of them help fill in a fuller picture.
You are speaking in tongues again Rabbit. I have not a ScoobyDoo, I'm afraid.
I shouldn’t pander to you and your special needs, but as you have cried for help, some people here are clearly oblivious to the issues with word clouds and can’t use them properly like I can.
Do word clouds help you capture complex themes from the data, or in fact distract you if all you do is glance at the biggest words? For example my analysis would try to pick up context. Where you are trying to imply the little words are meaningless, I argue Sunak launches war on the dingy people and suddenly gets little words like tough, leadership, and Starmer gets little words like weak, pro immigration appear. This is important.
You have a way with words, to coin a phrase.
I reckon that saying might catch on, you know
I particularly like the idea of a war on dingy people - accountants to be concerned?
No. Chartered Accountants are cool and interesting people.
Dated that though. Accountancy (Chartered) went through a revolution in the 80s. It started to attract lots of 21 year old graduates from top unis who were both smart and directionless.
My youngest wants to go into finance. Perhaps accountancy.
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
With the obvious caveat that I don't know her my advice is for her to study a subject she really likes at the best uni she can get into. Then see how things develop.
17 year olds choosing degrees based on what they like, without considering employability, is a terrible life decision.
To an extent, sure. But a 2:1 or better in any course from a half-decent university is at least reasonably employable and if you enjoy the subject you're surely more likely to get a better grade.
As a man with a Philosophy Degree from a decent University, I don't regret my time there at all. I was not mature enough to enter the workforce at 18. I'm not even sure I was mature enough at 21.
If someone gets into a third tier University to do a subject without strong obvious job prospects, then - yes - it's probably a waste of money.
But there simply isn't that much demand for quite bright 18 year olds out there. Employers prefer people who are a little older and a little more mature. University shows that you are able to self manage yourself over a substantial period of time. That's an incredibly important signal to an employer.
Starmer says he has declared £14 of bank interest. Someone should tell him Toynbee not bother at de minimis levels. Ang accountants in or are they all at parties?
I once declared -2p of interest on my tax returns.
Sadly it was too subtle and HMRC did not twig I was making an awesome pun at their expense.
Just seen that autocorrect in my post. I can’t imagine I’ve typed the word “Toynbee“ in ten years. That’s odd. I assumed it was driven by my usage, which is why I now have to be careful if I ever did want to write “ducking”.
Autocorrect *hates* me for typing DfT. It blames the DfE for even more things than I do.
Apple appears to have taken an extreme next step in pushing ahead with its return-to-office mandate, leaving many employees facing a tough decision.
Zoë Schiffer of Platformer explained in a tweet(opens in new tab) that the iPhone maker is tracking employees’ attendance via their badge records as it stands its ground on a three-day-per-week policy.
Workers failing to adhere could face “escalating warnings” that in some cases are said to be leading to termination, however the precise details of any consequences remain undercover, for now at least.
If he praised Johnson would he get your vote back?
No
SKS is quoting from Thatcher's 1975 speech to the Tory Party in which she condemns the Shrewsbury 24 (later exonerated on 2010s), a Labour council refusing to raise rents on social housing & praises the British Army following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972
So perfectly normal stuff from a Labour leader
'She was right about that' implies she was wrong about everything else.
Or do you think he ought not to seriously mess with Tory heads by pointing out they're so useless they can't even get the vaguely useful parts of Thatcherism right?
What I think is irrelevant as there is zero chance i will vote for him anyway.
SKS peaked a few weeks ago its all downhill from here.
Please explain.
Labour lead up 7 to 26 in this week’s YouGov published just now in The Times Red Box.
My reckoning it is people love Starmer's pension arrangements.
Something very odd is going on with polling in the last month. Huge differences not only between pollsters but between successive polls from the same pollster. And in both directions.
Partially. As I mentioned up thread, all the pollsters this week have the Labour Party in the mid 40s. Earlier this week, the Deltapoll that everyone pinned the Tory hopes on has Labour on 45%, Survation has them at 46% and R&W 47%. That is remarkably consistent. On the other hand the same pollsters had the Tories on 35%, 31% and 26% respectively. Even the 45% with Deltapoll is a stonkingly huge vote share.
The really big fluctuations are occurring with the Tories and others. All this suggests to me that those who intend to vote Labour have decided that's that they're going to do. Those who don't want to vote Labour can't make their minds up who they want to vote for. Maybe they're getting squeezed on either side by Reform and the LD's.
Today's YouGov looks like the outlier to me as the Labour vote share looks out of step with the others relatively constant picture.
An interesting (to me) finding there is only a minority of trans people identify as one particular gender. Eg just 12% as trans men and 22% as trans women - the category that just about all of the debate here gets focussed on. Also striking how there's a wide and level spectrum on to what extent trans people present to society as a gender different to that at birth. It's very often not a binary all-or-nothing situation. This sort of real life complexity rarely gets a look-in when the topic is discussed. It's extremely poorly served imo.
Have you listened to that JK Rowling podcast yet.
For me, it was hugely interesting and educational. Saying how Tumblr was instrumental in "where we are" today in the eg trans (but other issues) debate. As the podcast has it, it was a "safe space" where all kinds of, usually liberal, left-wing theories were put forward - climate, ecology, identifiying as a man/woman/cloud, etc - and, in response from counter-theories, in particular from 4chan, then became ever more defensive, eventually withdrawing the right of people to criticise or even disagree with the Tumblr-originated definitions. It is where the concept snowlfake was first used. Which then to a large extent has crossed to the mainstream, whereby disagreement, let alone criticism of various theories has become taboo.
The podcast related this to JKR and actually if you look at every single review of the podcast it proceeds from the premise that Rowling is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.
I say "educational" - it is of course only one point of view and I will look out others.
You should give it a go.
Cheers. For me this topic is more about a sense of perspective and practicalities than right/wrong. I have the podcast flagged.
Yes I don't think there is a right or wrong (as I noted upthread to Malmesbury). Both sides are hugely compelling which is why I think it best to proceed a posteriori rather than try to figure out how to put the engine together from first principles.
It's more that, while there are rights involved (the right to do as you please), there are other rights that conflict with that.
The point of good law making is to create a framework for resolving the clashes between rights.
Screaming at the top of your voice that anyone who suggests that there is a clash is a Racist Sexist Misogynistic Homophobic Neon-Nazi Baby Eater just makes people wonder if someone has found the plot you have obviously lost.
I should note that some people were denying there was a problem, that it would ever happen in real life etc... Right until Sturgeon stepped in to deal with an actual example.
Yes there definitely is a problem. Now I don't know the stats but I suspect that this is a "stranger danger" issue - all too real for those who have suffered it, but (could be vanishingly) small actual occurrences.
As discussed, the sensible safeguards should keep people happy.
The law is all about edge cases. 99.99%+ of human interactions are just fine and need no recourse to *any* law, after all.
The problem is the absolutists who demand absolutely no safeguards/limits - If you don't think that violent rapists should be allowed in general population in a women's prison, you are bigot.
There's also a problem in viewing the whole issue from that angle. Eg GRR can co-exist with a sensible policy for prisons.
Yup - but you have to answer that question. Instead of
- complaining that asking the question is a problem. - complaining that it doesn't happen very often. - complaining that the question is sometimes asked by the wrong kind of people. - saying that it is a complicated question and can only be answered by Special People.
Assessing how often something might happen and the consequences if it does isn't 'complaining'. The problem is more that rational attempts to do that tend to get blatted out by hysteria, hyperbole, illogic and bigotry.
IIRC before the comedy with the bill, you were saying "It can't happen", "They won't do that, trust me" etc.
Well, it happened.
Not having an answer, because it means hurting one group or another is not an answer.
The answer is that, for a small number of cases, self-ID doesn't work. It works the other 99.99% of the time.
I get that it hurts to say so. It is very hard to be progressive and say "you, the persecuted minority, must have a limit on your rights".
Nonsense. I've always said prisons are an example of where sex might be more relevant than gender identity.
Yesterday afternoon, it was a bright, sunny day in Seattle; went out and about wearing sunglasses and Hawai'ian shirt (also other clothing, but those were highlights).
This morning, it is a cold, windy and now rainy day, with forecast calling for hail, sleet, maybe a wee bit of snow in the lowlands; will soon be snowing like a son-of-a-gun up in the mountains.
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
Graduates taking various subjects does not make it diverse....in my experience graduates are the biggest example of group think you can get regardless of what they study
I'm being perfectly serious. Who you get going into ACA are graduates from top unis in lots of different arts and science subjects who have no clue what they want to do in life and so kind of drift into it. This makes for a much cooler and more interesting crowd than you find in most other professions.
Nah. I’ve sat in the lessons with the grads. They are of a type.
Bollocks they are. It's a far more diverse intake than things like the law or engineering or teaching or medicine or IT.
Well, maybe, but selected from that diverse potential intake by the common characteristic of wanting to do accountancy.
But they don't. Not particularly. This is the point. It's graduates from all types of backgrounds, and a great gender mix, with good degrees from good unis in a wide subject range of arts and sciences and humanities - you name it basically - who don't know what they want to do. This is the common thread. They are smart and directionless. As all the most fun and interesting people are at the age of 21.
Graduates taking various subjects does not make it diverse....in my experience graduates are the biggest example of group think you can get regardless of what they study
Although perhaps less so now that so many do go to uni. There'd be less diversity back when it was the preserve of those from private schools and grammars.
Comments
Pity about the state of the party he leads, but I suppose you can't have everything.
I would not, however, be surprised to find Farage is personally in favour of it. To his discredit.
Or, to make it snappier "Vote Sunak, risk getting Rees-Mogg*" (* substitute the loon of the moment as appropriate).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIzPpKuorgs (this is a rare one!)
So given the horrendous student loan system (9% graduate tax for 40 years anyone?) and poor value for money given by university courses (some, perhaps most); does my daughter:
1) go to a Russell Group university (if she gets the grades and is accepted) 2) go to a non-Russell Group university (if she fails to get the grades) or 3) leave school at 18 and join a large accountancy firm with an apprentice degree-equivalent option (the equivalent being accountancy exams).
I don't know what to advise her (though she doesn't listen to me anyway).
The other day I had a post deleted on another site because it "added nothing to the topic".
Such a rule here, and we'd need a dozen more moderators.
(I appologise that this post has added nothing to the topic.)
To be fair, accountancy is not the *most* boring job. Apparently there are four other careers even worse, though apparently 66% of accountants do find their jobs dull:
https://www.accountancydaily.co/accounting-ranked-fifth-most-boring-job
- complaining that asking the question is a problem.
- complaining that it doesn't happen very often.
- complaining that the question is sometimes asked by the wrong kind of people.
- saying that it is a complicated question and can only be answered by Special People.
The thing is she chats with her friends who say "of course I'm going to uni" and tries to explain the student loan system to them and they just glaze-over. They haven't got a clue about what they are blindly walking into.
I'm also coloured by the experience of the one year foundation course at a university that my eldest is currently doing - which has not been good and a bigger waste of money I would find it hard to imagine. The university is taking the piss massively, partly perhaps because the £7000+ fees are paid by the government for a foundation year rather than the student. It's been an eye-opening experience.
https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1638942765961584665
A common variant ... uses a ball which has been set on fire and can be played at night. It has a league, several practicing communities and about 800 players across Mexico as of 2010. It is one of 150 pre-Hispanic Mexican games at risk of dying out along with Ulama.
Gareth Southgate raising to government the importance on limiting foreign access to English football. Frankly they should put a rule in that limits foreigners to 7 out of 11 positions on each team. We can do it now after the EU prevented us for years.
An acquaintance works in social services. When the Rotherham matter began to enter the public domain, there were a storm of emails and messages from Senior People. They were demanding all kinds of plans be made - army sent in, arbitrary arrests, curfews.
For the locals. Not the perpetrators.
They were quite convinced that the locals would get the pitchforks and torches out, and start on the ethnic cleansing.
Yet, aside from a small amount stupid stuff from the usual semi-nazis, Rotherham failed to burn.
Think about that - in the face of the most calculated, designed-to-set-people-off provocation you could imagine, nothing.
Sadly it was too subtle and HMRC did not twig I was making an awesome pun at their expense.
(c.f. Jean Giraudoux - a bit recondite, but wth)
That means a lot of territory ceded - far, far more than Russia has captured around Bakhmut. Putin can't be happy at that. Another general about to be fired?
Def Min Margarita Robles says four more Leopards due for Ukraine will arrive soon in a factory near Seville for inspection and testing.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1638950987095220243
'Sometimes in the midst of a crisis it is helpful to go back to basics and ask the most fundamental and obvious question. Like: How the heck is a simple increase in interest rates causing so much chaos in the banking system?
. . . .
For it was not just the fools at Silicon Valley Bank who underestimated the danger; Bloomberg reports that it took until late last year for bank regulators to realize that SVB, uh, “needed to improve how it tracked interest-rate risks.” Which is arguably symptomatic of a broader problem: “To me,” tweeted finance professor Will Diamond of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, “the biggest culprit in SVB’s failure is that the fed’s most severe stress test scenario in 2022 didn’t even consider the possibility of rising interest rates.”'
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/23/interest-rates-banks-inflation-economy/
Let me repeat that: " . . the fed’s most severe stress test scenario in 2022 didn’t even consider the possibility of rising interest rates.”
I am by no means an expert, but I knew interest rates were going to go up, and probably soon. As I assume most of you knew, too. So, why didn't regulators?
(If you don't read Megan McArdle regularly, you probably should.)
I know a lot of people who trained as accountants at the big firms, and treated the process a little bit like a Masters in the US. It was an opportunity to earn some money, learn some skills, and then decide where to go on to.
When I was at Goldman 25 years ago, the average starting age on the graduate training programme was 26/27, and that was largely because either (a) people went to European universities and graduated later, (b) had done a Masters, or (c) came from another profession (most likely accountancy) first.
Well, it happened.
Not having an answer, because it means hurting one group or another is not an answer.
The answer is that, for a small number of cases, self-ID doesn't work. It works the other 99.99% of the time.
I get that it hurts to say so. It is very hard to be progressive and say "you, the persecuted minority, must have a limit on your rights".
“Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.”
This seems to have exceed the size of BigDecimal in Java.
Which in turn has set off a chain reaction of IT collapse through The City.
My advice is to start running now.
If someone gets into a third tier University to do a subject without strong obvious job prospects, then - yes - it's probably a waste of money.
But there simply isn't that much demand for quite bright 18 year olds out there. Employers prefer people who are a little older and a little more mature. University shows that you are able to self manage yourself over a substantial period of time. That's an incredibly important signal to an employer.
OR Johnny Appleseed?
AND were HIS eccentric wanderings across the early American frontier, really 1st-class espionage cover?
IF so, for whom? The most likely culprit = Perfidious Albion aka The British Empire.
The really big fluctuations are occurring with the Tories and others. All this suggests to me that those who intend to vote Labour have decided that's that they're going to do. Those who don't want to vote Labour can't make their minds up who they want to vote for. Maybe they're getting squeezed on either side by Reform and the LD's.
Today's YouGov looks like the outlier to me as the Labour vote share looks out of step with the others relatively constant picture.
Yesterday afternoon, it was a bright, sunny day in Seattle; went out and about wearing sunglasses and Hawai'ian shirt (also other clothing, but those were highlights).
This morning, it is a cold, windy and now rainy day, with forecast calling for hail, sleet, maybe a wee bit of snow in the lowlands; will soon be snowing like a son-of-a-gun up in the mountains.