People have known this for a while. Currently, AI has no concept of truth, and it's not obvious that truth can emerge from AI doing what it currently does harder, faster and with more data.
For some tasks, creating art or fiction or certain sorts of journalism, that doesn't matter much. (Joining the threads together, see the journalistic career of Boris.) And the ability to make a dozen possibilities cheaply and in minutes is a boon. Take these rather lovely AI attempts at town planning;
But if reality matters in a task, AI is worse than useless.
Absolutely. At the the Uni we often set students literature reviews - the background knowledge of an area prior to embarking on a research project. ChatGPT will do the review (mostly ok) but the references it generates (not cites, that’s not how it works) are gibberish that look superficially like references but are not correct, and don’t exist. The way it works does not lend itself to genuinely citing other works. Maybe that will change, but I’m not clear how.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
Utter bollocks, they tried that in 2014 etc , these losers will just keep coming back for more unless they are pounded into the ground. For Ukraine it is all or nothing.
The whole long sorry tale has strong echoes of the British relationship with the Islrish free state from 1922 until WW2, but with Britain having learned from the mistakes of the previous decades and become more civilised in its dealings with Ireland, rather than progressively more covetous and violent as Russia has become towards Ukraine.
Ireland also “had its own thugs” in 1916 and for many years after that. They even managed a civil war not unlike Ukraine’s (and post Soviet Georgia’s) internal struggles between more or less pro-Russian movements.
The inflection point would be the Anglo-Irish trade war of 1933. After Ukraine struggled internally over its own trading links with the EU and Russia, finally turning decisively away from Russia’s economic sphere of influence in 2014, Russia invaded and annexed territories. When Fianna Fáil reversed Ireland’s free trade relationship and refused to pay British land annuities, we got into a gentlemanly tariff war instead.
Britain and Ireland are now allies and friends, albeit with some residual distrust and resentments lurking under the surface. Russia and Ukraine are now mortal enemies and expect Ukrainians will now hold an ancestral enmity against their neighbour for generations.
Off-topic t but just had a birthday card delivered. Postmark second of May in good time for my birthday on the sixth. Only had to come to North Essex from London!
People have known this for a while. Currently, AI has no concept of truth, and it's not obvious that truth can emerge from AI doing what it currently does harder, faster and with more data.
For some tasks, creating art or fiction or certain sorts of journalism, that doesn't matter much. (Joining the threads together, see the journalistic career of Boris.) And the ability to make a dozen possibilities cheaply and in minutes is a boon. Take these rather lovely AI attempts at town planning;
But if reality matters in a task, AI is worse than useless.
Absolutely. At the the Uni we often set students literature reviews - the background knowledge of an area prior to embarking on a research project. ChatGPT will do the review (mostly ok) but the references it generates (not cites, that’s not how it works) are gibberish that look superficially like references but are not correct, and don’t exist. The way it works does not lend itself to genuinely citing other works. Maybe that will change, but I’m not clear how.
It's difficult.
For humans there are generally penalties to believing in fiction over fact. We get tested by physical reality. And even then, humans aren't that great at discriminating between truth and make-believe.
I don't expect it to generate net revenue, as it's too easy for the rich to evade it, and they tend to be more attached to their money than most.
Not all the rich avoid it - there is a very wide and surprising spread in effective tax rates for the wealthy.
A bit out of date but of those earning £1m plus in UK 2015-16 average tax was 35%. A quarter paid 45% and a tenth paid 11% or less. So in the UK about a quarter of the richest are doing little to no tax avoidance, even though it is not difficult to get the rate much lower.
Category question: do we count North Korea as a monarchy these days? In pretty much every sense of the word it is. I’m wondering if there are any other countries that are republics in official form but hereditary monarchies in substance (no, political dynasties like Kennedys and bushes don’t count).
And is there a constitutional form where there is no head of state at all, not even ceremonial? No reason there couldn’t be, but I’m not sure if it exists. Could the head of state be a legal entity - a holding company for example, or a trust, or cooperative (to sound less capitalist) in which all citizens are shareholders? The PM and cabinet therefore acting as the board in the interests of the investors. Add some non execs and voila, a national model of corporate governance.
Would be interesting to posit this sort of arrangement to voters in a poll, vs forms of presidency.
No North Korea is not a monarchy, it is a Communist state and an absolute dictatorship enforced by the military whose President just happens to be the same as his father. Monarchs are also aristocrats, which the Jong Uns aren't or never have been
Aristocrats? Do you regard King Charles XIV John of Sweden, founder of the current Swedish Royal House, as having been a monarch? He was the son of a notary. Or Emperor Justin I of the Byzantine Empire? Justin was a peasant, possibly a swineherd.
King Charles XIV John only became King as Charles XIII died childless. He was also brother in law to Emperor Napoleon of France's brother Joseph. Napoleon was himself aristocracy from the Lombards through his mother.
Charles XIV's son married the daughter of the Duke of Leuchtenberg, immediately pushing aristocratic blood into the Swedish royal line.
Whether all Emperors are genuine monarchs and royal is debateable, like Justin I some are just military generals who lead an Empire. Emperor means leader of an Empire more than it does royal
Interesting (and I am happy to be persuaded on this). So you’re distinguishing monarchs from others - even if the monarch is a usurper as so many have been - by the motive and justification for their originally taking power.
A usurping monarch claims the throne by virtue of being an heir through blood line. Whereas Kim il Sung first won power through a political faction with no claim of ancestral heirship. So that original claim and the motivation for it carries down the later generations.
Off-topic t but just had a birthday card delivered. Postmark second of May in good time for my birthday on the sixth. Only had to come to North Essex from London!
Tell the sender not to be mean and next time send you a decent sized parcel. 24 or 48 hours delivery guaranteed.
People have known this for a while. Currently, AI has no concept of truth, and it's not obvious that truth can emerge from AI doing what it currently does harder, faster and with more data.
For some tasks, creating art or fiction or certain sorts of journalism, that doesn't matter much. (Joining the threads together, see the journalistic career of Boris.) And the ability to make a dozen possibilities cheaply and in minutes is a boon. Take these rather lovely AI attempts at town planning;
People have known this for a while. Currently, AI has no concept of truth, and it's not obvious that truth can emerge from AI doing what it currently does harder, faster and with more data.
For some tasks, creating art or fiction or certain sorts of journalism, that doesn't matter much. (Joining the threads together, see the journalistic career of Boris.) And the ability to make a dozen possibilities cheaply and in minutes is a boon. Take these rather lovely AI attempts at town planning;
But if reality matters in a task, AI is worse than useless.
Absolutely. At the the Uni we often set students literature reviews - the background knowledge of an area prior to embarking on a research project. ChatGPT will do the review (mostly ok) but the references it generates (not cites, that’s not how it works) are gibberish that look superficially like references but are not correct, and don’t exist. The way it works does not lend itself to genuinely citing other works. Maybe that will change, but I’m not clear how.
It's difficult.
For humans there are generally penalties to believing in fiction over fact. We get tested by physical reality. And even then, humans aren't that great at discriminating between truth and make-believe.
The penalties are for not believing shared wisdom, rather than for not believing fiction over fact. See religion or North Korea or Galileo. If AI can build a consistent and coherent but false narrative that is sufficient.
Category question: do we count North Korea as a monarchy these days? In pretty much every sense of the word it is. I’m wondering if there are any other countries that are republics in official form but hereditary monarchies in substance (no, political dynasties like Kennedys and bushes don’t count).
And is there a constitutional form where there is no head of state at all, not even ceremonial? No reason there couldn’t be, but I’m not sure if it exists. Could the head of state be a legal entity - a holding company for example, or a trust, or cooperative (to sound less capitalist) in which all citizens are shareholders? The PM and cabinet therefore acting as the board in the interests of the investors. Add some non execs and voila, a national model of corporate governance.
Would be interesting to posit this sort of arrangement to voters in a poll, vs forms of presidency.
No North Korea is not a monarchy, it is a Communist state and an absolute dictatorship enforced by the military whose President just happens to be the same as his father. Monarchs are also aristocrats, which the Jong Uns aren't or never have been
Aristocrats? Do you regard King Charles XIV John of Sweden, founder of the current Swedish Royal House, as having been a monarch? He was the son of a notary. Or Emperor Justin I of the Byzantine Empire? Justin was a peasant, possibly a swineherd.
King Charles XIV John only became King as Charles XIII died childless. He was also brother in law to Emperor Napoleon of France's brother Joseph. Napoleon was himself aristocracy from the Lombards through his mother.
Charles XIV's son married the daughter of the Duke of Leuchtenberg, immediately pushing aristocratic blood into the Swedish royal line.
Whether all Emperors are genuine monarchs and royal is debateable, like Justin I some are just military generals who lead an Empire. Emperor means leader of an Empire more than it does royal
Interesting (and I am happy to be persuaded on this). So you’re distinguishing monarchs from others - even if the monarch is a usurper as so many have been - by the motive and justification for their originally taking power.
A usurping monarch claims the throne by virtue of being an heir through blood line. Whereas Kim il Sung first won power through a political faction with no claim of ancestral heirship. So that original claim and the motivation for it carries down the later generations.
A peasant, a soldier, or a prostitute can certainly become a monarch. The Roman Empire provides examples.
And Rome was a monarchy, from the time of Augustus, notwithstanding it called itself a Republic.
Off-topic t but just had a birthday card delivered. Postmark second of May in good time for my birthday on the sixth. Only had to come to North Essex from London!
Tell the sender not to be mean and next time send you a decent sized parcel. 24 or 48 hours delivery guaranteed.
Lucky it wasn't a summons.
Actually, that rings a bell. I was asked in April if I wanted to renew my driving license. I wrote back reasonably quickly telling them that I was somewhat disadvantaged by my recent operation, and the need for it. They replied on fourth of May with a detailed form, saying they want a reply within four weeks. The letter arrived on or about the 19th!
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Some of us here have Ukranian families, who’d rather not be turned over by Putin’s mob, and who value their freedom.
Oh, and the $5k I had to spend on replacing the windows in my apartment, after the mob bombed the school next door, thinking it was the government building next to it.
The Germans and the Russians have already, in the past, reduced my family in that part of the world, considerably.
Objecting the Russian traditional weekend sport of Stomp Ukraine is therefore a bit personal as well.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
The state briefly removed Russian as an official language. That puts them roughly on a par with the Welsh rather than the Irish.
I think it is crucial to get support to Ukraine now whilst the US President is favourable to them but I don't see how Russia's position is going to strengthen as the economic damage is just beginning and neither is there any way the Ukrainians would accept partition.
As for civil war, the only serious conflict has (funnily enough) been in two regions out of 25 that border Russia. I've seen no evidence that the separatists there were anything but thugs and bandits who would have been defeated without the support of the Russian state. It was nothing more than an attempt by the Russian state to get its tentacles back into Ukraine.
I see Mayfair didn't last long at all. He'd have done better and drawn less attention to himself, perhaps, if he'd started off a bit more modestly - perhaps as Old Kent Road.
Has he merely been sent to coventry or sent straight to jail?
I don't expect it to generate net revenue, as it's too easy for the rich to evade it, and they tend to be more attached to their money than most.
Not all the rich avoid it - there is a very wide and surprising spread in effective tax rates for the wealthy.
A bit out of date but of those earning £1m plus in UK 2015-16 average tax was 35%. A quarter paid 45% and a tenth paid 11% or less. So in the UK about a quarter of the richest are doing little to no tax avoidance, even though it is not difficult to get the rate much lower.
I see Mayfair didn't last long at all. He'd have done better and drawn less attention to himself, perhaps, if he'd started off a bit more modestly - perhaps as Old Kent Road.
Has he merely been sent to coventry or sent straight to jail?
Much worse.
On a desert island with only Radiohead as his company.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
Utter bollocks, they tried that in 2014 etc , these losers will just keep coming back for more unless they are pounded into the ground. For Ukraine it is all or nothing.
The whole long sorry tale has strong echoes of the British relationship with the Islrish free state from 1922 until WW2, but with Britain having learned from the mistakes of the previous decades and become more civilised in its dealings with Ireland, rather than progressively more covetous and violent as Russia has become towards Ukraine.
Ireland also “had its own thugs” in 1916 and for many years after that. They even managed a civil war not unlike Ukraine’s (and post Soviet Georgia’s) internal struggles between more or less pro-Russian movements.
The inflection point would be the Anglo-Irish trade war of 1933. After Ukraine struggled internally over its own trading links with the EU and Russia, finally turning decisively away from Russia’s economic sphere of influence in 2014, Russia invaded and annexed territories. When Fianna Fáil reversed Ireland’s free trade relationship and refused to pay British land annuities, we got into a gentlemanly tariff war instead.
Britain and Ireland are now allies and friends, albeit with some residual distrust and resentments lurking under the surface. Russia and Ukraine are now mortal enemies and expect Ukrainians will now hold an ancestral enmity against their neighbour for generations.
The problem is that Russian ultra nationalists haven’t got as far as realising that
1) making friends by bombing people rarely works 2) that friends are what you need as neighbours.
Interestingly, the Polish ultranationalists have reached that conclusion. They have explicitly rejected any irredentism - so that Poland will respect the existing borders with all her neighbours and form an alliance with them. There is much talk of Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine as a mutual self defence group.
The explicit point made is that Russia has traditionally explored divisions in the area - if they stand together….
920 euros for a seat at this years Monaco Grand Prix
Morris Dancer please explain
Peanuts for a gentleman such as yourself surely? Everyone wants to be there, and there’s only so many places to be.
We have a Radio 1 event in the Park this weekend. I can see traffic jams for way less than that.
It was a pleasant evening last night so we went down to our local pub and had tea and pints sitting outside listening to the noise from the park which could be heard fairly clearly. Dance "music" in the main. Decent beats but absolutely nothing else to it.
Johnson and Trump meet over dinner today to progress their respective resurrections.
I know people are cynical about Johnson, but I'm sure that one of the things on his agenda was making sure Trump is sound on Ukraine.
Indeed.
My cynicism runs so deep that were Boris Johnson to live donate his duplicate organs to save the lives of children, I would be looking for the angle, and who could blame me based on his back story.
You're clearly part of the woke establishment blob conspiracy.
For the sake of my blood pressure and general mental well-being, I sadly won’t be reading what sounds like a good book - Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s account of Johnson’s premiership ‘Johnson at 10’. Simply reading the review has got my hackles up:
‘Boris Johnson has been accused of many, many things over the years. But the parties and the lies, the sleaze and the juicier scandals don’t seem to interest historians Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell much. Their central complaint in this utterly scathing account of his time at No 10 is the more fundamental one that, as they put it, he “never understood how to be prime minister, nor how to govern”; that he didn’t know what he was doing, barely bothered learning, and was so lacking in moral seriousness that even when he tried he couldn’t transcend the limitations of his “base self”…
‘The story really begins with Johnson’s response to his side winning the Brexit referendum: far from celebrating, they write, he paced the house looking “ashen-faced and distraught”, panicking aloud that: “Oh shit, we’ve got no plan. We haven’t thought about it. I didn’t think it would happen.” What weighed most heavily in his choosing leave over remain, they suggest, was his own personal ambition…
‘The book describes a prime minister alarmingly unable to focus and seemingly out of his depth, who Cummings felt should be kept out of Brexit negotiations because “he didn’t understand them”. He promoted mediocre ministers who didn’t threaten him, played rival aides off against each other, and showed shockingly little interest in major issues such as education; privately agnostic about the divisive “war on woke”, he nonetheless let his government wage it vigorously. Even those closest to him struggled to discern his real opinions…
‘The case for Johnson’s defence is usually that he got Brexit done, rolled out a Covid vaccine and stood with Ukraine. But Seldon and Newell argue that Brexit hasn’t delivered as promised, that the real vaccine heroes were the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and NHS executive Dr Emily Lawson, with the European Commission president more influential on Ukraine…
‘… it refutes the dangerous myth that Boris Johnson was foiled by a remainer establishment, rather than his own incompetence. His former chief of staff Eddie Lister declares that there is “no evidence that the civil service impeded the delivery of Brexit” and the authors conclude that if Johnson didn’t always get what he wanted from Whitehall, that’s because he led it poorly…’
Brexit - no plan; a poor idea badly botched by a chancer charlatan. We continue to live with the baleful consequences. It’s not surprising he and Gove were ashen faced at the the presser the day after the referendum, they knew their jolly wheeze had exploded in their faces.
I've read the book, it confirmed what I said long before Boris Johnson became PM.
He is fundamentally too lazy to be PM, he just wants the glory but none of the hard work.
Any reason you can think of why the covid enquiry can’t have his unredacted whatsapp messaging?
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
For the sake of my blood pressure and general mental well-being, I sadly won’t be reading what sounds like a good book - Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s account of Johnson’s premiership ‘Johnson at 10’. Simply reading the review has got my hackles up:
‘Boris Johnson has been accused of many, many things over the years. But the parties and the lies, the sleaze and the juicier scandals don’t seem to interest historians Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell much. Their central complaint in this utterly scathing account of his time at No 10 is the more fundamental one that, as they put it, he “never understood how to be prime minister, nor how to govern”; that he didn’t know what he was doing, barely bothered learning, and was so lacking in moral seriousness that even when he tried he couldn’t transcend the limitations of his “base self”…
‘The story really begins with Johnson’s response to his side winning the Brexit referendum: far from celebrating, they write, he paced the house looking “ashen-faced and distraught”, panicking aloud that: “Oh shit, we’ve got no plan. We haven’t thought about it. I didn’t think it would happen.” What weighed most heavily in his choosing leave over remain, they suggest, was his own personal ambition…
‘The book describes a prime minister alarmingly unable to focus and seemingly out of his depth, who Cummings felt should be kept out of Brexit negotiations because “he didn’t understand them”. He promoted mediocre ministers who didn’t threaten him, played rival aides off against each other, and showed shockingly little interest in major issues such as education; privately agnostic about the divisive “war on woke”, he nonetheless let his government wage it vigorously. Even those closest to him struggled to discern his real opinions…
‘The case for Johnson’s defence is usually that he got Brexit done, rolled out a Covid vaccine and stood with Ukraine. But Seldon and Newell argue that Brexit hasn’t delivered as promised, that the real vaccine heroes were the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and NHS executive Dr Emily Lawson, with the European Commission president more influential on Ukraine…
‘… it refutes the dangerous myth that Boris Johnson was foiled by a remainer establishment, rather than his own incompetence. His former chief of staff Eddie Lister declares that there is “no evidence that the civil service impeded the delivery of Brexit” and the authors conclude that if Johnson didn’t always get what he wanted from Whitehall, that’s because he led it poorly…’
Brexit - no plan; a poor idea badly botched by a chancer charlatan. We continue to live with the baleful consequences. It’s not surprising he and Gove were ashen faced at the the presser the day after the referendum, they knew their jolly wheeze had exploded in their faces.
I've read the book, it confirmed what I said long before Boris Johnson became PM.
He is fundamentally too lazy to be PM, he just wants the glory but none of the hard work.
Any reason you can think of why the covid enquiry can’t have his unredacted whatsapp messaging?
It depends how enthusiastic team Johnson are with the Sharpie. More Sharpie than text leaves documents meaningless.
Category question: do we count North Korea as a monarchy these days? In pretty much every sense of the word it is. I’m wondering if there are any other countries that are republics in official form but hereditary monarchies in substance (no, political dynasties like Kennedys and bushes don’t count).
And is there a constitutional form where there is no head of state at all, not even ceremonial? No reason there couldn’t be, but I’m not sure if it exists. Could the head of state be a legal entity - a holding company for example, or a trust, or cooperative (to sound less capitalist) in which all citizens are shareholders? The PM and cabinet therefore acting as the board in the interests of the investors. Add some non execs and voila, a national model of corporate governance.
Would be interesting to posit this sort of arrangement to voters in a poll, vs forms of presidency.
No North Korea is not a monarchy, it is a Communist state and an absolute dictatorship enforced by the military whose President just happens to be the same as his father. Monarchs are also aristocrats, which the Jong Uns aren't or never have been
Aristocrats? Do you regard King Charles XIV John of Sweden, founder of the current Swedish Royal House, as having been a monarch? He was the son of a notary. Or Emperor Justin I of the Byzantine Empire? Justin was a peasant, possibly a swineherd.
King Charles XIV John only became King as Charles XIII died childless. He was also brother in law to Emperor Napoleon of France's brother Joseph. Napoleon was himself aristocracy from the Lombards through his mother.
Charles XIV's son married the daughter of the Duke of Leuchtenberg, immediately pushing aristocratic blood into the Swedish royal line.
Whether all Emperors are genuine monarchs and royal is debateable, like Justin I some are just military generals who lead an Empire. Emperor means leader of an Empire more than it does royal
Interesting (and I am happy to be persuaded on this). So you’re distinguishing monarchs from others - even if the monarch is a usurper as so many have been - by the motive and justification for their originally taking power.
A usurping monarch claims the throne by virtue of being an heir through blood line. Whereas Kim il Sung first won power through a political faction with no claim of ancestral heirship. So that original claim and the motivation for it carries down the later generations.
Kim has divine status, of course. So his heirs clearly rule by divine right.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
Only in the US, would there be a law that says that the state (Medicare, and Medicaid) is explicitly forbidden to negotiate with their suppliers, and must buy drugs at the advertised price if they wish to prescribe them.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
I see Mayfair didn't last long at all. He'd have done better and drawn less attention to himself, perhaps, if he'd started off a bit more modestly - perhaps as Old Kent Road.
Has he merely been sent to coventry or sent straight to jail?
Much worse.
On a desert island with only Radiohead as his company.
If he has taken the whole band with him, then give him the Order of Lenin.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
The US healthcare system is one extreme, and the UK healthcare system is the other extreme. It suits detractors of both systems, to suggest that the other is the only alternative.
Meanwhile, pretty much every other developed country has a functional and non-political healthcare system.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
That is true except that most innovations in healthcare come from the United States, possibly because of the vast amounts of money sloshing around in the system, some of which can be spent on research.
This week's bot was almost impressive. Ranting about woke in schools. How democracy is failing. How strong leadership is needed.
We sure he is a Russian bot? And not one of the NatC speakers? TBH I look at some of the GBeebies people on Twitter and they don't sound much different.
That's because Russian bots pick up their arguments from any dissenting voice they can find and try to imitate them.
Meanwhile, the first F3 race at Monaco is about to start. 30 drivers, with an average age of about 17, on a track that’s too narrow and with barriers everywhere. What could possibly go wrong?
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
They could only succeed if they're honest about what they're doing, but I don't think they would be. They'd try and do it by stealth while talking about protecting the NHS.
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
The only way to move to it is to have both Labour and Conservative agree to implement it over a 15-20 year period, without future political interference.
Meanwhile, the first F3 race at Monaco is about to start. 30 drivers, with an average age of about 17, on a track that’s too narrow and with barriers everywhere. What could possibly go wrong?
It could be entertaining? That would never do at Monaco....
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
Meanwhile, the first F3 race at Monaco is about to start. 30 drivers, with an average age of about 17, on a track that’s too narrow and with barriers everywhere. What could possibly go wrong?
It could be entertaining? That would never do at Monaco....
Rachel Reeves doesn't seem to understand the difference between profit before tax and profit after tax:
Energy firms are making "war profits" from the surge in oil and gas prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the shadow chancellor has said.
Rachel Reeves has told the BBC that companies should be "taxed properly".
Last year, the government introduced a windfall tax on profits made from extracting oil and gas in the UK to help fund a scheme to lower bills.
A Treasury spokesperson said the profits are being used to "ease pressure on families" in the UK.
"These funds are being used to hold down people's energy bills and fund one of the most generous cost of living packages in the world- worth £94bn, which is around £3,300 per household this year and last," the spokesperson said.
The Energy Profits Levy (EPL), introduced in May last year, is set at 35% and together with other taxes takes the rate on oil and gas companies to 75%.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
The state briefly removed Russian as an official language. That puts them roughly on a par with the Welsh rather than the Irish.
I think it is crucial to get support to Ukraine now whilst the US President is favourable to them but I don't see how Russia's position is going to strengthen as the economic damage is just beginning and neither is there any way the Ukrainians would accept partition.
As for civil war, the only serious conflict has (funnily enough) been in two regions out of 25 that border Russia. I've seen no evidence that the separatists there were anything but thugs and bandits who would have been defeated without the support of the Russian state. It was nothing more than an attempt by the Russian state to get its tentacles back into Ukraine.
Yes, it can't be pointed out often enough that language <> nationality. There are plenty of Russian speaking Ukrainians who don't feel in the least bit Russian. There are also Russian speaking Ukrainians who do consider themselves Russian, but my understanding is that these are mainly in Crimea.
I say this only for information, and not to advance any particular solution.
The economic backdrop makes me think a Labour majority is increasingly likely and value from a betting perspective.
Some observers were right that the doom and gloom of a recession wasn't reflecting reality. And they were right. But for that same reason we still have full employment and rising core inflation.
Policymakers in the Treasury and BoE have admitted to this wage price spiral, and so we're going to see rates go over 5% and conceivably more. Only a recession is likely to depress demand sufficiently to get inflation towards 2% rather than 5%+.
And recessions in the 12 months before an election are unlikely to boost the popularity of an already unpopular government. It will be Labour's to lose.
But why should it be so irrational as that? If the number priority right now is actively managing down inflation, why should those whose number one priority is to throw more petrol on the fire and in doing so crash and burn our country be the winners, and the R word in every instance be so politically toxic? I’m not saying anything you thought or predicted in your post isn’t true, just that it means the voters in a democracy are voting out of ignorance, does it not?
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
Once upon a time there were these people known as the Sudeten Germans. They were treated very badly by the country. But they had a noble and generous friend in the neighbouring land. His name was Alf. Alf promised to protect them from their naughty master, and one day came to rescue them. Everybody lived happily ever after, the end.
The German minorities in various neighbouring countries were actually treated moderately badly, pre WWII. As an excuse for invading the whole of Europe and murdering by the million… just no.
“ state briefly removed Russian as an official language.”
If that is the level of excuse allowing invasion and dismembering of countries, then we should invade and carve up France, for their treatment of refugees. Quite a few of whom have family already in the U.K…. I want Aquitaine.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
Only in the US, would there be a law that says that the state (Medicare, and Medicaid) is explicitly forbidden to negotiate with their suppliers, and must buy drugs at the advertised price if they wish to prescribe them.
I'm sure there are numerous third world kleptocracies which have similar laws.
The USA differs in being a first world kleptocracy.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
It’s criminalising personal behaviour. The government should keep out of the marital bed.
Children are best brought up in a stable family unit. That is best achieved by a happy marriage. An unhappy marriage is not good for children.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense if you believe privatisation, rather than good delivery, is the goal.
Only if you are susceptible to tenuous conspiracy theories dreamt up by loony academics.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
Only in the US, would there be a law that says that the state (Medicare, and Medicaid) is explicitly forbidden to negotiate with their suppliers, and must buy drugs at the advertised price if they wish to prescribe them.
I'm sure there are numerous third world kleptocracies which have similar laws.
The USA differs in being a first world kleptocracy.
I meant to add, that the US prevents the State from negotiating the price of pharmaceuticals, while the same prescription-only drugs are advertised on television.
People have known this for a while. Currently, AI has no concept of truth, and it's not obvious that truth can emerge from AI doing what it currently does harder, faster and with more data.
For some tasks, creating art or fiction or certain sorts of journalism, that doesn't matter much. (Joining the threads together, see the journalistic career of Boris.) And the ability to make a dozen possibilities cheaply and in minutes is a boon. Take these rather lovely AI attempts at town planning;
But if reality matters in a task, AI is worse than useless.
Absolutely. At the the Uni we often set students literature reviews - the background knowledge of an area prior to embarking on a research project. ChatGPT will do the review (mostly ok) but the references it generates (not cites, that’s not how it works) are gibberish that look superficially like references but are not correct, and don’t exist. The way it works does not lend itself to genuinely citing other works. Maybe that will change, but I’m not clear how.
An exam room with no aids except paper and pen is a great leveller and truth finder. I think we might see institutions that want to remain intellectually elite using this ancient device more in future.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
The state briefly removed Russian as an official language. That puts them roughly on a par with the Welsh rather than the Irish.
I think it is crucial to get support to Ukraine now whilst the US President is favourable to them but I don't see how Russia's position is going to strengthen as the economic damage is just beginning and neither is there any way the Ukrainians would accept partition.
As for civil war, the only serious conflict has (funnily enough) been in two regions out of 25 that border Russia. I've seen no evidence that the separatists there were anything but thugs and bandits who would have been defeated without the support of the Russian state. It was nothing more than an attempt by the Russian state to get its tentacles back into Ukraine.
Yes, it can't be pointed out often enough that language <> nationality. There are plenty of Russian speaking Ukrainians who don't feel in the least bit Russian. There are also Russian speaking Ukrainians who do consider themselves Russian, but my understanding is that these are mainly in Crimea.
I say this only for information, and not to advance any particular solution.
I recently heard a potted biography of Zelensky, and he is very much in the former group. Raised in Ukraine as a Russian speaker, he lived in Russia as a child for a few years, appeared many times of Russian TV and has property in Russia. He was Ukrainian, but has very close links with Russia.
After Russia invaded in 2014, he decided his Ukrainian identity mattered more than his Russian. When he decided to enter politics, he had to teach himself to speak better Ukrainian.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Ukrainians would have had to ask themselves similar questions over the last ten or twenty years. It seems the vast majority made the same choice Zelensky did.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
Divorce without grounds in quite new to Scotland, and very new to England.
More or less all western systems required grounds, reasons, for divorce until recently.
Texas is entitled to take its own view, and is accountable to Texas voters.
Are they by the way going to make it harder for women than for me? (Which the Old Testament does). I suspect that's why Jesus taught against the Old Testament line.
Most sane people would like divorce (like abortion) to be legal and rare. I doubt if this can be legislated for even in texas.
Marriage means different things to different people. Trying to enforce an essentially religious idea of marriage on a disinterested and largely non-religious population is a completely hopeless cause. The 'no fault' rules are reflective of the worldview of an atomised society.
I don’t think there’s anything especially religious about the view that spouses should take their sworn obligations to each other very seriously. No fault divorce conflicts with that.
It says quite a bit about us, as a society, and nothing good, that breach of a commercial contract attracts a greater legal penalty than breach of one’s marriage vows.
No fault divorce is not about a breach of contract, though, is it? It’s about 2 parties to a contract mutually wishing to terminate that contract. That’s allowed in commercial contracts, isn’t it?
No. The point about no fault divorce is that one of two parties can unilaterally decide the position without any reference at all to the thoughts of the other. The other party's rights are entirely obliterated. That is what 'no fault divorce' is.
Personally I think in our sort of society this is unavoidable, but in human and philosophical terms it's horrendous.
OK, thanks for the explanation.
When you say the other party’s rights are obliterated… their rights to what? To be married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to them? What would you suggest the unhappy spouse should be obliged to do, specifically?
I’ve not particularly thought of it in these terms, but say you have significant wealth created during the marriage
I’m not sure that a no fault divorce should necessarily result in the same economic division as where there is fault on one side
While I have sympathy with that view, the consequence of that would be that the incentive to dig up dirt on your ex would be enormous.
Good news for Private Eyes. Pretty shitty for the children of the divorcing couple.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
They are entitled to their view. But not to impose their view on someone else
They are in strongly religious states like Texas
No, they are not.
Passing a law means they are legally allowed to. That does not mean they are entitled to.
Well tough, if secular liberals choose to live in a very religious state like Texas they have to accept the fact it has a Republican Governor and Legislature, voted for Trump and is strongly socially conservative and will pass socially conservative laws
Tyranny of the majority is no basis for a stable democracy.
Personally I don’t think that Christ was ok with people stoning the woman taking in adultery. It’s the same with divorce: let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone
So democracy is OK so long as it supports social liberalism, the moment it doesn't democracy is not OK then on that basis.
Restricting divorce is also not the same as stoning adulterers and you know it
My dad commented to me today that he no longer supported democracy as he doesnt believe it works. Many are now talking like this. No tough decisions can be made.
What's the weather like in Moscow?
There's a refreshing and witty take on the situation that we've never heard before.
With ukraines lamentable battlefield performance they aint got many comebacks left. When does the spring offensive start.
That's a strange response. Why are you emotionally invested in Russian military success? Are you longing for a conqueror to look up to?
There are plenty of British people on here who are incredibly emotionally invested, to the point of autoeroticism, in a Ukrainian military success. It's like football. It's just more interesting if you've got a favourite team.
Very edgy, as ever. Who could ever have predicted emotional investment in conflicts which make the news?
Let's get someone to come out with something idiotic like 'Why do people even care about things happening in X?' as though international affairs are of no concern to anyone in reality and it is just silly.
No, let's just pretend instead that it's strange to get emotionally invested in events, and imply it's not real or rational to do so. We could be cool and troll people with terminology while we're at it, that's what a rebel does.
DuraAce is correct that there’s a level of complexity and nuance to the Ukraine situation that goes way over the head of most casual observers.
It’s not completely bonkers to regard the conflict as something resembling a civil war. Another way of looking at it is through the endemic corruption in both Ukraine and Russia, post-1990. Ukrainians had had enough and Putins thugs didn’t like being denied access to the the Ukrainian cash machine. Be under no illusions, Ukraine has its own thugs, though.
There’s all sorts of angles to it.
You went for an easy hit there, kle4.
It's not like a civil war. It's a foreign invasion. A literal war of conquest against an innocent country.
Countries don't have to be perfect to be regarded as innocent victims. Ukraine's deficiencies are pale compared to what has been done to them, and the implicit victim-blaming here is crass if you didn't mean it and repugnant if you did.
The Russian speaking population in the eastern parts of Ukraine have some claim to be regarded as victims, IE when the state briefly removed Russian as an official language.
It seems to me that the answer to this conflict is probably not in the total defeat of Russia, but in the partitioning of Ukraine, and it is better to try and get to this position in the next 18 months when Russia is at its weakest point, and Ukraine is being fully backed by the US. Russia may well come to be in an advantageous position by 2025 dependent on the outcome of the election.
The state briefly removed Russian as an official language. That puts them roughly on a par with the Welsh rather than the Irish.
I think it is crucial to get support to Ukraine now whilst the US President is favourable to them but I don't see how Russia's position is going to strengthen as the economic damage is just beginning and neither is there any way the Ukrainians would accept partition.
As for civil war, the only serious conflict has (funnily enough) been in two regions out of 25 that border Russia. I've seen no evidence that the separatists there were anything but thugs and bandits who would have been defeated without the support of the Russian state. It was nothing more than an attempt by the Russian state to get its tentacles back into Ukraine.
Yes, it can't be pointed out often enough that language <> nationality. There are plenty of Russian speaking Ukrainians who don't feel in the least bit Russian. There are also Russian speaking Ukrainians who do consider themselves Russian, but my understanding is that these are mainly in Crimea.
I say this only for information, and not to advance any particular solution.
I recently heard a potted biography of Zelensky, and he is very much in the former group. Raised in Ukraine as a Russian speaker, he lived in Russia as a child for a few years, appeared many times of Russian TV and has property in Russia. He was Ukrainian, but has very close links with Russia.
After Russia invaded in 2014, he decided his Ukrainian identity mattered more than his Russian. When he decided to enter politics, he had to teach himself to speak better Ukrainian.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Ukrainians would have had to ask themselves similar questions over the last ten or twenty years. It seems the vast majority made the same choice Zelensky did.
My wife and her friend had a lot of the same conversations. Her friend was right, and my wife wrong, which she didn’t realise until 24th Feb last year. Her opinion was quite clear within hours, after the invasion.
Evening all, interesting bit of news for today. According to Dieter Helm, that Oxford analyst I remember being quoted somehere, if interest rates reach 5% then the water companies will need propping up by government.
If the government has to pump huge amount of taxpayers' money to deal with their leveraged private equity mess, without getting any further public accountability or control, the public anger over dirty rivers and appalling management of many things will be look like a walk in the park for them, compared.
Oooh. That is a big danger for the tories. I assumed the water companies debt was fixed and very very long term. I did a google news search for dieter helm and couldn’t see anything? Do you have a link?
Pondering further Hunts comments today - I wonder at what point Baileys position becomes untenable?
Yes, will have a look back to see if I can find it.
The actual report was from last autumn, when he said their private equity model isn't viable if interest rates were to rise much more than where they were then, which I think was about 4.75%, or so.
I disagree with Dieter on this (unless you have simplified his analysis)
The infra funds bought into the water companies on the basis of a high single digit return. They they loaded up with cheap debt (a bit of a windfall because debt was cheaper than expected).
But if the cost of debt were 10% (where we see deals pricing at the moment) then the dividends are 1.5 (9 - (75*10%)) and the equity return = 1.5/25 or around 6-7%
That doesn’t mean that the private equity model doesn’t work. But it does mean that the next investor will only be able to pay around 7.5 for the equity to generate a 20% return. So there is a massive write down in the valuation for the current owners
So question is how long until the debt needs to be refinanced…
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
The only way to move to it is to have both Labour and Conservative agree to implement it over a 15-20 year period, without future political interference.
The Tories cannot be trusted to hold to that. They'll convert it to US-style at the earliest opportunity.
Rachel Reeves doesn't seem to understand the difference between profit before tax and profit after tax:
Energy firms are making "war profits" from the surge in oil and gas prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the shadow chancellor has said.
Rachel Reeves has told the BBC that companies should be "taxed properly".
Last year, the government introduced a windfall tax on profits made from extracting oil and gas in the UK to help fund a scheme to lower bills.
A Treasury spokesperson said the profits are being used to "ease pressure on families" in the UK.
"These funds are being used to hold down people's energy bills and fund one of the most generous cost of living packages in the world- worth £94bn, which is around £3,300 per household this year and last," the spokesperson said.
The Energy Profits Levy (EPL), introduced in May last year, is set at 35% and together with other taxes takes the rate on oil and gas companies to 75%.
People have known this for a while. Currently, AI has no concept of truth, and it's not obvious that truth can emerge from AI doing what it currently does harder, faster and with more data.
For some tasks, creating art or fiction or certain sorts of journalism, that doesn't matter much. (Joining the threads together, see the journalistic career of Boris.) And the ability to make a dozen possibilities cheaply and in minutes is a boon. Take these rather lovely AI attempts at town planning;
But if reality matters in a task, AI is worse than useless.
Absolutely. At the the Uni we often set students literature reviews - the background knowledge of an area prior to embarking on a research project. ChatGPT will do the review (mostly ok) but the references it generates (not cites, that’s not how it works) are gibberish that look superficially like references but are not correct, and don’t exist. The way it works does not lend itself to genuinely citing other works. Maybe that will change, but I’m not clear how.
An exam room with no aids except paper and pen is a great leveller and truth finder. I think we might see institutions that want to remain intellectually elite using this ancient device more in future.
Yep I can see a move back to in person exams and vivas.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense if you believe privatisation, rather than good delivery, is the goal.
Only if you are susceptible to tenuous conspiracy theories dreamt up by loony academics.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
It's not a tenuous conspiracy theory to believe that some politicians are driven more by ideological purity and less by practical considerations or effective outcomes. You know they exist in all walks of politics.
Proving the case is rather more difficult, but the theory is much more coherent than you give credit for.
The theory depends on the idea that someone who wants to privatise the NHS needs to "manufacture consent" so they deliverately set about making the service as bad as possible, regardless of its effect on their electability. It's on a par with Chomsky's more recent thoughts on Ukraine.
The only practical effect of the theory is to make people think irrationally about government spending decisions.
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
The only way to move to it is to have both Labour and Conservative agree to implement it over a 15-20 year period, without future political interference.
The Tories cannot be trusted to hold to that. They'll convert it to US-style at the earliest opportunity.
And therein lies the fundamental problem - you have no trust.
The Vatican also opposes 'no fault divorce' as do some socially conservative, pro traditional family Tory MPs.
It is hardly that extreme a position
People who wish to divorce, or have done, would presumably disagree
They are entitled to their view, the strongly religious to theirs which is marriage should be between one man and one woman for life
Divorce without grounds in quite new to Scotland, and very new to England.
More or less all western systems required grounds, reasons, for divorce until recently.
Texas is entitled to take its own view, and is accountable to Texas voters.
Are they by the way going to make it harder for women than for me? (Which the Old Testament does). I suspect that's why Jesus taught against the Old Testament line.
Most sane people would like divorce (like abortion) to be legal and rare. I doubt if this can be legislated for even in texas.
Marriage means different things to different people. Trying to enforce an essentially religious idea of marriage on a disinterested and largely non-religious population is a completely hopeless cause. The 'no fault' rules are reflective of the worldview of an atomised society.
I don’t think there’s anything especially religious about the view that spouses should take their sworn obligations to each other very seriously. No fault divorce conflicts with that.
It says quite a bit about us, as a society, and nothing good, that breach of a commercial contract attracts a greater legal penalty than breach of one’s marriage vows.
No fault divorce is not about a breach of contract, though, is it? It’s about 2 parties to a contract mutually wishing to terminate that contract. That’s allowed in commercial contracts, isn’t it?
No. The point about no fault divorce is that one of two parties can unilaterally decide the position without any reference at all to the thoughts of the other. The other party's rights are entirely obliterated. That is what 'no fault divorce' is.
Personally I think in our sort of society this is unavoidable, but in human and philosophical terms it's horrendous.
OK, thanks for the explanation.
When you say the other party’s rights are obliterated… their rights to what? To be married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to them? What would you suggest the unhappy spouse should be obliged to do, specifically?
I’ve not particularly thought of it in these terms, but say you have significant wealth created during the marriage
I’m not sure that a no fault divorce should necessarily result in the same economic division as where there is fault on one side
While I have sympathy with that view, the consequence of that would be that the incentive to dig up dirt on your ex would be enormous.
Good news for Private Eyes. Pretty shitty for the children of the divorcing couple.
The entire direction of English law for the last 60 years has been to move away from fault finding and apportioning blame, and then acting on it in economic terms.
Texas may move back there. English law is not going to.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense if you believe privatisation, rather than good delivery, is the goal.
Only if you are susceptible to tenuous conspiracy theories dreamt up by loony academics.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
It's not a tenuous conspiracy theory to believe that some politicians are driven more by ideological purity and less by practical considerations or effective outcomes. You know they exist in all walks of politics.
Proving the case is rather more difficult, but the theory is much more coherent than you give credit for.
The theory depends on the idea that someone who wants to privatise the NHS needs to "manufacture consent" so they deliverately set about making the service as bad as possible, regardless of its effect on their electability. It's on a par with Chomsky's more recent thoughts on Ukraine.
The only practical effect of the theory is to make people think irrationally about government spending decisions.
Noooooo. I have read through these exchanges, and all of you on both sides have this completely utterly wrong. You are all thinking in terms of idea’s, political beliefs, that this is a battle of ideology. STOP IT - it’s nothing of the sort. It’s politics but only in the sense power is wealth, wealth is power. The US healthcare system is what it is because of money in the lobby. UK healthcare will change to be like the US because of money in the lobby.
Yes, it can't be pointed out often enough that language <> nationality. There are plenty of Russian speaking Ukrainians who don't feel in the least bit Russian. There are also Russian speaking Ukrainians who do consider themselves Russian, but my understanding is that these are mainly in Crimea.
I say this only for information, and not to advance any particular solution.
Being a native Russian speaker doesn't necessarily mean a Russian identity (though it often does). After all, Zelly himself is a native Russian speaker who affects a spectacularly mangled version of Ukrainian.
There are plenty of people in the Southern and Eastern oblasts (and Kiev) who both speak Russian and identify as Russian. I wouldn't like to guess at the proportion though electoral support for pro Russian parties like the (now banned) Party of the Regions would be a rough guide. They are known as 'zhdaniy'. Literally, "The Ones Who Wait"; the implication being that they are waiting for the RF to arrive.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense if you believe privatisation, rather than good delivery, is the goal.
Only if you are susceptible to tenuous conspiracy theories dreamt up by loony academics.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
It's not a tenuous conspiracy theory to believe that some politicians are driven more by ideological purity and less by practical considerations or effective outcomes. You know they exist in all walks of politics.
Proving the case is rather more difficult, but the theory is much more coherent than you give credit for.
The theory depends on the idea that someone who wants to privatise the NHS needs to "manufacture consent" so they deliverately set about making the service as bad as possible, regardless of its effect on their electability. It's on a par with Chomsky's more recent thoughts on Ukraine.
The only practical effect of the theory is to make people think irrationally about government spending decisions.
Noooooo. I have read through these exchanges, and all of you on both sides have this completely utterly wrong. You are all thinking in terms of idea’s, political beliefs, that this is a battle of ideology. STOP IT - it’s nothing of the sort. It’s politics but only in the sense power is wealth, wealth is power. The US healthcare system is what it is because of money in the lobby. UK healthcare will change to be like the US because of money in the lobby.
Did I not say that "flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap" makes more sense as a conspiracy theory? US Big Medicine Inc would much rather take over a shiny new hospital paid for by the UK taxpayer.
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
It appears that, to some, labour are the answer to every question posed as how to improve the U.K.
If Labour are the answer to at least a couple of questions as how to to improve the UK, I would take that. And would be an improvement on the current lot.
No it's not that Labour is the answer to every question. For example Thatcher was the answer in the 1980s.
But on healthcare, the Tories just cannot be trusted, too many of their MPs have interests in US-healthcare. So my point was that Labour is naturally inclined to the NHS so if they made it a European-system they would be doing it not out of ideology but for hopefully good reasons.
This week's bot was almost impressive. Ranting about woke in schools. How democracy is failing. How strong leadership is needed.
We sure he is a Russian bot? And not one of the NatC speakers? TBH I look at some of the GBeebies people on Twitter and they don't sound much different.
I took as much gay propaganda and perversion I could to school, but the teachers didn’t like it at all. Not one bit. I like to think this has changed in just a dozen years, but strongly suspect the Nat-C’s and GBeebies are completely wrong on this. What a load of hopeful rubbish SovBot’s spout. 👭
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
It appears that, to some, labour are the answer to every question posed as how to improve the U.K.
If Labour are the answer to at least a couple of questions as how to to improve the UK, I would take that. And would be an improvement on the current lot.
Not making things worse might also be an improvement on the current lot.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense if you believe privatisation, rather than good delivery, is the goal.
Only if you are susceptible to tenuous conspiracy theories dreamt up by loony academics.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
It's not a tenuous conspiracy theory to believe that some politicians are driven more by ideological purity and less by practical considerations or effective outcomes. You know they exist in all walks of politics.
Proving the case is rather more difficult, but the theory is much more coherent than you give credit for.
The theory depends on the idea that someone who wants to privatise the NHS needs to "manufacture consent" so they deliverately set about making the service as bad as possible, regardless of its effect on their electability. It's on a par with Chomsky's more recent thoughts on Ukraine.
The only practical effect of the theory is to make people think irrationally about government spending decisions.
Noooooo. I have read through these exchanges, and all of you on both sides have this completely utterly wrong. You are all thinking in terms of idea’s, political beliefs, that this is a battle of ideology. STOP IT - it’s nothing of the sort. It’s politics but only in the sense power is wealth, wealth is power. The US healthcare system is what it is because of money in the lobby. UK healthcare will change to be like the US because of money in the lobby.
Did I not say that "flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap" makes more sense as a conspiracy theory? US Big Medicine Inc would much rather take over a shiny new hospital paid for by the UK taxpayer.
So the Tory pledge to quickly build 40 of those was sinister then?
For the sake of my blood pressure and general mental well-being, I sadly won’t be reading what sounds like a good book - Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s account of Johnson’s premiership ‘Johnson at 10’. Simply reading the review has got my hackles up:
‘Boris Johnson has been accused of many, many things over the years. But the parties and the lies, the sleaze and the juicier scandals don’t seem to interest historians Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell much. Their central complaint in this utterly scathing account of his time at No 10 is the more fundamental one that, as they put it, he “never understood how to be prime minister, nor how to govern”; that he didn’t know what he was doing, barely bothered learning, and was so lacking in moral seriousness that even when he tried he couldn’t transcend the limitations of his “base self”…
‘The story really begins with Johnson’s response to his side winning the Brexit referendum: far from celebrating, they write, he paced the house looking “ashen-faced and distraught”, panicking aloud that: “Oh shit, we’ve got no plan. We haven’t thought about it. I didn’t think it would happen.” What weighed most heavily in his choosing leave over remain, they suggest, was his own personal ambition…
‘The book describes a prime minister alarmingly unable to focus and seemingly out of his depth, who Cummings felt should be kept out of Brexit negotiations because “he didn’t understand them”. He promoted mediocre ministers who didn’t threaten him, played rival aides off against each other, and showed shockingly little interest in major issues such as education; privately agnostic about the divisive “war on woke”, he nonetheless let his government wage it vigorously. Even those closest to him struggled to discern his real opinions…
‘The case for Johnson’s defence is usually that he got Brexit done, rolled out a Covid vaccine and stood with Ukraine. But Seldon and Newell argue that Brexit hasn’t delivered as promised, that the real vaccine heroes were the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and NHS executive Dr Emily Lawson, with the European Commission president more influential on Ukraine…
‘… it refutes the dangerous myth that Boris Johnson was foiled by a remainer establishment, rather than his own incompetence. His former chief of staff Eddie Lister declares that there is “no evidence that the civil service impeded the delivery of Brexit” and the authors conclude that if Johnson didn’t always get what he wanted from Whitehall, that’s because he led it poorly…’
Brexit - no plan; a poor idea badly botched by a chancer charlatan. We continue to live with the baleful consequences. It’s not surprising he and Gove were ashen faced at the the presser the day after the referendum, they knew their jolly wheeze had exploded in their faces.
I've read the book, it confirmed what I said long before Boris Johnson became PM.
He is fundamentally too lazy to be PM, he just wants the glory but none of the hard work.
Any reason you can think of why the covid enquiry can’t have his unredacted whatsapp messaging?
It depends how enthusiastic team Johnson are with the Sharpie. More Sharpie than text leaves documents meaningless.
The head of the inquiry can demand the documents unredacted - and should. If there are national security concerns, (1) why was Johnson using WhatsApp for the messages in the first place, and (2) she could engage, for example, a very senior retired security official to assess the question.
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
It appears that, to some, labour are the answer to every question posed as how to improve the U.K.
Not surprising really. The Tories clearly are not the answer so that doesn't leave much alternative except Labour. I am not a Labour voter and never will be. I won't vote for any of the main parties in their current itterations. But I can see very clearly the argument that the complete failure of the Tories to actually address the issues facing the country means they have foregone the right to stay in power, at least for the foreseeable future.
Long and lurid thread on the American healthcare racket. Literally a racket involving industrial production of fake medicines, false accounting, murder, endemic fraud and widespread killing of patients.
US healthcare is the one comparison which makes the NHS look brilliant.
US healthcare is in the UK lobby system, showing politicians the lolly and explaining they can help the crumbling and expensive UK socialised healthcare out, help bring it into the 21st century. The NHS will be replaced by the US system at some point for sure.
Running down, the unsustainable in its present form, NHS makes perfect sense if you have friends of influence in US life science and big pharma organisations.
This Chomskyite trope about "running down" services as a prelude to privatisation makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense if you believe privatisation, rather than good delivery, is the goal.
Only if you are susceptible to tenuous conspiracy theories dreamt up by loony academics.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
It's not a tenuous conspiracy theory to believe that some politicians are driven more by ideological purity and less by practical considerations or effective outcomes. You know they exist in all walks of politics.
Proving the case is rather more difficult, but the theory is much more coherent than you give credit for.
The theory depends on the idea that someone who wants to privatise the NHS needs to "manufacture consent" so they deliverately set about making the service as bad as possible, regardless of its effect on their electability. It's on a par with Chomsky's more recent thoughts on Ukraine.
The only practical effect of the theory is to make people think irrationally about government spending decisions.
Noooooo. I have read through these exchanges, and all of you on both sides have this completely utterly wrong. You are all thinking in terms of idea’s, political beliefs, that this is a battle of ideology. STOP IT - it’s nothing of the sort. It’s politics but only in the sense power is wealth, wealth is power. The US healthcare system is what it is because of money in the lobby. UK healthcare will change to be like the US because of money in the lobby.
Did I not say that "flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap" makes more sense as a conspiracy theory? US Big Medicine Inc would much rather take over a shiny new hospital paid for by the UK taxpayer.
So the Tory pledge to quickly build 40 of those was sinister then?
Musing about price increases against pay increases consider:
Monthly Income £2,000 Monthly expenditure £1,000 Wealth increase £1,000
Now say prices increase by 10% and pay by only 8% - seemingly a real terms pay cut but in monetary terms:
Monthly income £2,160 Monthly expenditure £1,100 Wealth increase £1,060
The vital thing is to have income greater than expenditure and the key determinant of that is your housing situation.
For those who have paid off their mortgages then cost of living crises should be things that happen to other people.
Unfortunately the £1060 is now worth about £964 in last year's money due to that inflation.
And add the real problem case as you allude to is:
Monthly Income £2,000 Monthly expenditure £2,000
becomes:
Monthly income £2,160 Monthly expenditure £2,200
Certainly the smaller the financial gap between income and expenditure is the greater the risk.
Additionally price rises vary between individuals - someone with a mortgage will be suffering a high increase in housing costs whereas someone who own a house outright will instead be getting increases in their savings interest.
In pretty much everyway we look at it the key determinant on current financial wellbeing is housing status.
This week's bot was almost impressive. Ranting about woke in schools. How democracy is failing. How strong leadership is needed.
We sure he is a Russian bot? And not one of the NatC speakers? TBH I look at some of the GBeebies people on Twitter and they don't sound much different.
This was one of Mayfair's comments:
"We can avoid recession if we admit 1 million immigrants next year."
They went for the gold trim thinking they’d be champions this season but they choked.
Arsenal’s choking was almost Spursy this year.
All went wrong after Granit Xhaka roused the Anfield crowd.
Stupid boy.
To be honest and balanced in assessment, you are right the Anfield game looks like a turning point for Arsenal, not just two nil up, but played very well and totally dominated that stage of the game. To not go on and win from there must have hit momentum and self belief. It was a similar story a week later at West Ham.
Nerves are part of it. I remember an interview with Alan Hansen when he said he hated the pressure of the run ins - personally he couldn’t sleep at night, used to try for a few more hours in the afternoon, and that the dressing room on match days was sick with nerves. Once results are wobbling those nerves and how it affects performance are only going to be worse.
Truth is Arsenal wobbled, trying to replace Saliba with Holding was laughable, but not just injuries the form of Partey and Xachka went off a cliff, and Saka looks out on his feet. As Man City players are flying after a season of rotation, Saka has not been rotated or looked after at all and it shows.
This is because the Arsenal squad are just not strong enough to match Man City’s 42 points from 46 run in. No one’s is.
The positive for Arsenal is not just 2nd and CL football, but their record against top 8 sides was pretty good, 4 off Newcastle, 4 off Liverpool, 6 off Tottenham, 3 of Man U and Brighton, 6 off villa. That’s the best guide of the progress they made this season.
Yes, it can't be pointed out often enough that language <> nationality. There are plenty of Russian speaking Ukrainians who don't feel in the least bit Russian. There are also Russian speaking Ukrainians who do consider themselves Russian, but my understanding is that these are mainly in Crimea.
I say this only for information, and not to advance any particular solution.
Being a native Russian speaker doesn't necessarily mean a Russian identity (though it often does). After all, Zelly himself is a native Russian speaker who affects a spectacularly mangled version of Ukrainian.
There are plenty of people in the Southern and Eastern oblasts (and Kiev) who both speak Russian and identify as Russian. I wouldn't like to guess at the proportion though electoral support for pro Russian parties like the (now banned) Party of the Regions would be a rough guide. They are known as 'zhdaniy'. Literally, "The Ones Who Wait"; the implication being that they are waiting for the RF to arrive.
I like the way you add "now banned". I wonder why a country that has been invaded might ban political parties that favour the invader. How dare they!
Russia has been interfering in Ukraine ever since the breakup. People who favour Russian TV channels and media would be getting a very different view of reality from those in western Ukraine. Sadly, they have now learnt the reality of Russian stronk - that it means death and destruction; that the Russians see them as lesser, and as cannon fodder.
If we want to move to a Europe-style healthcare system, only one party can do it: Labour
It appears that, to some, labour are the answer to every question posed as how to improve the U.K.
Not surprising really. The Tories clearly are not the answer so that doesn't leave much alternative except Labour. I am not a Labour voter and never will be. I won't vote for any of the main parties in their current itterations. But I can see very clearly the argument that the complete failure of the Tories to actually address the issues facing the country means they have foregone the right to stay in power, at least for the foreseeable future.
In many cases I suspect there aren't any answers.
Or at least answers which too many people want to hear.
Comments
Maybe that will change, but I’m not clear how.
Ireland also “had its own thugs” in 1916 and for many years after that. They even managed a civil war not unlike Ukraine’s (and post Soviet Georgia’s) internal struggles between more or less pro-Russian movements.
The inflection point would be the Anglo-Irish trade war of 1933. After Ukraine struggled internally over its own trading links with the EU and Russia, finally turning decisively away from Russia’s economic sphere of influence in 2014, Russia invaded and annexed territories. When Fianna Fáil reversed Ireland’s free trade relationship and refused to pay British land annuities, we got into a gentlemanly tariff war instead.
Britain and Ireland are now allies and friends, albeit with some residual distrust and resentments lurking under the surface. Russia and Ukraine are now mortal enemies and expect Ukrainians will now hold an ancestral enmity against their neighbour for generations.
Only had to come to North Essex from London!
For humans there are generally penalties to believing in fiction over fact. We get tested by physical reality. And even then, humans aren't that great at discriminating between truth and make-believe.
A bit out of date but of those earning £1m plus in UK 2015-16 average tax was 35%. A quarter paid 45% and a tenth paid 11% or less. So in the UK about a quarter of the richest are doing little to no tax avoidance, even though it is not difficult to get the rate much lower.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/economics/how-much-tax-do-the-rich-really-pay
A usurping monarch claims the throne by virtue of being an heir through blood line. Whereas Kim il Sung first won power through a political faction with no claim of ancestral heirship. So that original claim and the motivation for it carries down the later generations.
Lucky it wasn't a summons.
And Rome was a monarchy, from the time of Augustus, notwithstanding it called itself a Republic.
Objecting the Russian traditional weekend sport of Stomp Ukraine is therefore a bit personal as well.
I think it is crucial to get support to Ukraine now whilst the US President is favourable to them but I don't see how Russia's position is going to strengthen as the economic damage is just beginning and neither is there any way the Ukrainians would accept partition.
As for civil war, the only serious conflict has (funnily enough) been in two regions out of 25 that border Russia. I've seen no evidence that the separatists there were anything but thugs and bandits who would have been defeated without the support of the Russian state. It was nothing more than an attempt by the Russian state to get its tentacles back into Ukraine.
For added political fun, these are often the same people.
In the past, they had some very high tax rates. That nobody paid.
What they actually need is a *lower* tax rate, but to get rid of the vast mass of exemptions and writeoffs. This is politically impossible though.
On a desert island with only Radiohead as his company.
https://twitter.com/moetkacik/status/1661462749606739971
1) making friends by bombing people rarely works
2) that friends are what you need as neighbours.
Interestingly, the Polish ultranationalists have reached that conclusion. They have explicitly rejected any irredentism - so that Poland will respect the existing borders with all her neighbours and form an alliance with them. There is much talk of Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine as a mutual self defence group.
The explicit point made is that Russia has traditionally explored divisions in the area - if they stand together….
It was a pleasant evening last night so we went down to our local pub and had tea and pints sitting outside listening to the noise from the park which could be heard fairly clearly. Dance "music" in the main. Decent beats but absolutely nothing else to it.
newsentertainment on GBeebies with Lee Anderson as co-host.They made their name us club DJs and remixers, but they started writing their own dance music.
A few years ago they did an "acoustic" gig, with slower instrumental arrangements of their songs, then they took it on tour.
Both were recorded and released as albums and videos.
And they are superb!
Meanwhile, pretty much every other developed country has a functional and non-political healthcare system.
Energy firms are making "war profits" from the surge in oil and gas prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the shadow chancellor has said.
Rachel Reeves has told the BBC that companies should be "taxed properly".
Last year, the government introduced a windfall tax on profits made from extracting oil and gas in the UK to help fund a scheme to lower bills.
A Treasury spokesperson said the profits are being used to "ease pressure on families" in the UK.
"These funds are being used to hold down people's energy bills and fund one of the most generous cost of living packages in the world- worth £94bn, which is around £3,300 per household this year and last," the spokesperson said.
The Energy Profits Levy (EPL), introduced in May last year, is set at 35% and together with other taxes takes the rate on oil and gas companies to 75%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65730950
There are also Russian speaking Ukrainians who do consider themselves Russian, but my understanding is that these are mainly in Crimea.
I say this only for information, and not to advance any particular solution.
And Labour would be electorally punished for it.
“ state briefly removed Russian as an official language.”
If that is the level of excuse allowing invasion and dismembering of countries, then we should invade and carve up France, for their treatment of refugees. Quite a few of whom have family already in the U.K…. I want Aquitaine.
The USA differs in being a first world kleptocracy.
Children are best brought up in a stable family unit. That is best achieved by a happy marriage. An unhappy marriage is not good for children.
The opposite would make much more sense as a conspiracy: flooding the NHS with public investment before selling it off on the cheap.
Monthly Income £2,000
Monthly expenditure £1,000
Wealth increase £1,000
Now say prices increase by 10% and pay by only 8% - seemingly a real terms pay cut but in monetary terms:
Monthly income £2,160
Monthly expenditure £1,100
Wealth increase £1,060
The vital thing is to have income greater than expenditure and the key determinant of that is your housing situation.
For those who have paid off their mortgages then cost of living crises should be things that happen to other people.
After Russia invaded in 2014, he decided his Ukrainian identity mattered more than his Russian. When he decided to enter politics, he had to teach himself to speak better Ukrainian.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Ukrainians would have had to ask themselves similar questions over the last ten or twenty years. It seems the vast majority made the same choice Zelensky did.
Good news for Private Eyes. Pretty shitty for the children of the divorcing couple.
The infra funds bought into the water companies on the basis of a high single digit return. They they loaded up with cheap debt (a bit of a windfall because debt was cheaper than expected).
Simple math:
Price - 100 / Net Cashflow 9 (i.e 9% return)
Debt - 75 / Equity 25
Cost of debt 5% / 3.75
Dividends - 5.25
Equity return = 5.25/25 Ie >20%
But if the cost of debt were 10% (where we see deals pricing at the moment) then the dividends are 1.5 (9 - (75*10%)) and the equity return = 1.5/25 or around 6-7%
That doesn’t mean that the private equity model doesn’t work. But it does mean that the next investor will only be able to pay around 7.5 for the equity to generate a 20% return. So there is a massive write down in the valuation for the current owners
So question is how long until the debt needs to be refinanced…
As for the windfall tax, Richard Tyndall was pointing out yesterday the devastating impact it is having on North Sea oil and gas.
The only practical effect of the theory is to make people think irrationally about government spending decisions.
Texas may move back there. English law is not going to.
The sign of a proper club.
Stupid boy.
Post Office used racist terms for sub-postmasters in official guidance
Typical anti-woke public services
There are plenty of people in the Southern and Eastern oblasts (and Kiev) who both speak Russian and identify as Russian. I wouldn't like to guess at the proportion though electoral support for pro Russian parties like the (now banned) Party of the Regions would be a rough guide. They are known as 'zhdaniy'. Literally, "The Ones Who Wait"; the implication being that they are waiting for the RF to arrive.
You can also say increased interest rates increase saving returns including from mortgage free home owners
And add the real problem case as you allude to is:
Monthly Income £2,000
Monthly expenditure £2,000
becomes:
Monthly income £2,160
Monthly expenditure £2,200
But on healthcare, the Tories just cannot be trusted, too many of their MPs have interests in US-healthcare. So my point was that Labour is naturally inclined to the NHS so if they made it a European-system they would be doing it not out of ideology but for hopefully good reasons.
Additionally price rises vary between individuals - someone with a mortgage will be suffering a high increase in housing costs whereas someone who own a house outright will instead be getting increases in their savings interest.
In pretty much everyway we look at it the key determinant on current financial wellbeing is housing status.
"We can avoid recession if we admit 1 million immigrants next year."
The costs of living increases will be affecting some people badly and others not at all.
I'm not sure how previous periods of high inflation affected the country but currently there seems to be a wide spit in how people are being affected.
Nerves are part of it. I remember an interview with Alan Hansen when he said he hated the pressure of the run ins - personally he couldn’t sleep at night, used to try for a few more hours in the afternoon, and that the dressing room on match days was sick with nerves. Once results are wobbling those nerves and how it affects performance are only going to be worse.
Truth is Arsenal wobbled, trying to replace Saliba with Holding was laughable, but not just injuries the form of Partey and Xachka went off a cliff, and Saka looks out on his feet. As Man City players are flying after a season of rotation, Saka has not been rotated or looked after at all and it shows.
This is because the Arsenal squad are just not strong enough to match Man City’s 42 points from 46 run in. No one’s is.
The positive for Arsenal is not just 2nd and CL football, but their record against top 8 sides was pretty good, 4 off Newcastle, 4 off Liverpool, 6 off Tottenham, 3 of Man U and Brighton, 6 off villa. That’s the best guide of the progress they made this season.
Russia has been interfering in Ukraine ever since the breakup. People who favour Russian TV channels and media would be getting a very different view of reality from those in western Ukraine. Sadly, they have now learnt the reality of Russian stronk - that it means death and destruction; that the Russians see them as lesser, and as cannon fodder.
And yet Llandudno RNLI have just received a shout so hopefully they can assist successfully once again
I expect it to be a very busy Bank Holiday weekend for the RNLI crews around the UK
Or at least answers which too many people want to hear.