When will the Tories poll 30% or more again? – politicalbetting.com

The last poll that the Tories on 30% or higher was the More In Common, conducted on the 14th to the 16th of October. Being stuck in the 20s for a month constitutes a rut.
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And, FPT
Incidentally to build on our discussion yesterday:
Ofsted 'seen as toxic' and schools should 'self-evaluate' instead, says inquiry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67449711
First off, its premise is right but I think its conclusions miss the point. OFSTED is toxic and has to go. Pre-written reports by safeguarding risks based on a series of foolish tick boxes are as useless as Susan Acland-Hood, and certainly militate against good education.
However, self-evaluation would mean very often no evaluation. Everybody should have a second check. There are ways that could be done constructively rather than punitively, as at present, but it should happen.
Second, they overlook the issues in Ofsted's structure, which is careless. I suspect it's because the person chairing the report was responsible as Schools Minister for adding to its remit with such catastrophic results.
However, we then come back to the significance of this. Lord Knight is a Labour peer and has shared platforms with Keir Starmer in the past. He's also a senior figure at the TES and a Fellow of the Institute for Education. He is very well-connected and if he's calling for OFSTED to be fundamentally reformed it suggests its days are numbered.
Otherwise I wouldn't expect one this side of the actual campaign.
He has talked of abandoning the Argentine currency and dollarisation as a means of stopping runaway inflation, currently 140%. There is no doubt that the fiscal and monetary policies of Argentina have been disastrous. It will be interesting to see how he does.
It looks as if investors are worried about the forthcoming share issues which should provide liquidity in the stock and heaps of mullah for them.
But, truthfully, so would his opponent have done. It will be interesting to see whether he does as badly or worse.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
It RegUK implode, the Conservatives get above 30% then. Otherwise, I'm not sure they do until their new leader gets a honeymoon.
As for a tax cutting bonanza (as opposed to aspirations for a fifth term that won't happen), how do they afford it?
He wants to ban abortion, liberalise gun laws, and allow a free trade in human organs. He says climate change has been invented by “neo-Marxists”, goes on about “cultural Marxism” and wants to ban sex education in schools. He wants to remove trade union rights. He’s anti-immigration. His rhetoric is about attacking the political elite. He is friends not just with Trump, but with the likes of Vox in Spain and Bolsonaro in Brazil. He also says he has conversations with God and can communicate with dogs through a mystic, although that’s not a specifically far right position.
The amazing thing here is that the OpenAI board have stuck to their guns, despite vehement opposition from their 49% shareholder - Microsoft
You have to be really determined, to anger and alienate Microsoft, esp if they own nearly half your company
This is why there are lurid rumours of AGI’s arrival, imminent or maybe already
In terms of other far right policies, he toyed with the idea of letting people sell their children, but had to walk back those remarks. He wants to transfer the penitentiary system to military control. He called the Pope an “envoy of Satan”, but later apologised for that.
Oh, and the final damning proof of his idiocy is that he’s a big fan of Bitcoin.
The government's answer to criticisms appears solely to consist in saying that it performs an essential role.
Truly pathetic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/technology/openai-altman-ceo-not-returning.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/20/sam-altman-openai-ceo-wont-return-chatgpt-talks-fail-emmett-shear-twitch?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
A massive rift in the company, which might be best explained as: some of them believe they have achieved AGI (and maybe some don’t). The constitution of OpenAI almost demands ructions at that point
Tellingly, the guy they’ve appointed to replace Sam Altman is a known techno-pessimist - wants to slow down AI research as he sees it as very dangerous. This would also accord with the idea they’ve attained AGI, or are notably close
Microsoft shares are down 7% since Altman got fired
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, forwarded government documents to her private email account while serving as attorney-general, risking a breach of the ministerial code, a freedom of information disclosure shows.
Braverman was sacked by Rishi Sunak on November 13 after comments she made in a column for The Times condemning pro-Palestinian protests as “hate marches” and accusing the Metropolitan Police of “playing favourites”.
It is not the first time that her inappropriate use of private email has been uncovered. She was forced to resign from Liz Truss’s cabinet in October last year when she was found to have breached security provisions of the code by forwarding a draft ministerial statement from her personal email address to Sir John Hayes, a fellow right-wing Tory MP.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suella-braverman-private-email-government-business-attorney-general-k0qsmsmqs
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1726389948318617749
Probably less disposed to boycott X for Elon's flirtation with antisemitism, too.
The Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund RedBird IMI is in line to take control of The Telegraph within weeks in a deal that is causing concern among Conservative MPs.
RedBird IMI would serve as a conduit for a £1.2bn loan, mostly provided by the Emirati royal and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, which would allow the Barclay family to repay in full a debt to Lloyds Banking Group.
It is understood that almost as soon as that deal is completed, the loan would be converted to shares, making RedBird IMI owner of The Telegraph.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/19/telegraph-new-owner-abu-dhabi-backed-fund-redbird/
Perhaps much they can do about that.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1726386355717251408
Privatisation of 'thievery', as far as I can see.
IF - and of course it is a massive IF - this proves to be the case, this article from the Speccie three weeks ago looks remarkably prescient
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-is-too-late-the-ai-monster-is-at-the-door/
https://x.com/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.
At least he’s not talking about the Falklands/Malvinas!
About 10m people from Vietnam would transform the place, for instance
OpenAI might have entirely blown themselves up
Treachery and betrayal, powerplays and castrations and the birth of mega-dragons
Brigitte Macron says her ‘head was in a mess’ when she dated future French president when he was 15 and she was 40 trib.al/jl654qo
https://x.com/nypost/status/1726306374798205427?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg
It is amazing more isn’t made of this. Esp when very strong rumours say he was actually 14 when it began, and of course she was his teacher
1) delete OFSTED
2) launch some fun enquiries to justify the decision. There’s plenty of dirt there
3) push the money into schools
4) teachers unions cheer
The problem is, as you say, that self inspection is no inspection. Good, well run schools will give themselves an A. Complete failures will give themselves an A….
Are they building a new inspection system, secretly, at the edge of the Galaxy?
Wilhuff Tarkin:
[walking in with Darth Vader] The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.
Tagge:
That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Tarkin:
The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
Will the Conservatives poll 30% before Max Verstappen stops being F1 World Champion?
Microsoft are taking the talent….
They’ve sacked the genius kid who took them to a $90bn valuation, and his wingman, the man driving them to AGI (and whoever gets there first will reap mega-galactic rewards) and replaced him with a dude whose sole intention is to slow down research and be cautious and not go too far too soon
Yeah, that’s gonna be popular with investors
Meanwhile all the Go For It AGI talent has simply shifted to half-owner (and vastly richer) Microsoft with - I am guessing - carte blanche to make the ASI superdeity by Tuesday
It’s like the Ford motor company sacking Henry Ford with his plans for a production line and handing control to John Ruskin and the son of Ned Ludd
And then Henry Ford moving to Shell
The second probably can't be done- what makes a school great is pretty subjective and it's too easy to put up a facade.
A lot of Ofsted's problems come from trying to do the impossible second thing on the cheap.
As for DavidL's dog owners in Angus, they're not wrong. Especially with Border Collies.
https://www.sciencealert.com/dogs-respond-to-an-average-of-89-unique-words-experiment-finds
Must be some dispute there
It is also headline news on Times, the Guardian, BBC, etc - and literally the lead story on the New York Times
I suggest it is your PAINFUL intellectual mediocrity which is at work here, not any sad obsession of mine
And, finally, the first person to mention it on this thread was @DavidL not me? Go see
Other than that, a truly brilliant point
Any IP created during the term of his employment - and presumably he has a long notice period - belongs to OpenAI.
Microsoft won’t want to be in a dispute either and it will be heavily scrutinised so I assume they will be very careful
My sense was that despite its amazing speed, it gave the strong sense of being a rapid but lazy student who had read the reviews but hadn't read the book or evaluated the argument.
So, for example, on law case X, it could summarise the issues but could not evaluate the weaknesses of the submissions on one particular side (even though they had been live streamed on the internet); on academic subject Y it had obviously read the major website and couldn't respond to a specific detailed question going beyond it.
This, I understand, is because if a source does not exist digitally then AI doesn't know it. This limitation is immense.
Most important modern books (there are millions) don't exist in that digital space SFAICS.
Will AI get beyond that limitation?
Why not try that? Instead of complaining - plaintively - about OTHER comments?
https://twitter.com/QualyThe/status/1726271515153584321
Seems as likely as any of Leon's predictions (which I do not dismiss entirely).
https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1726509045803336122
Ambitious.
Going round the place de la concorde in my uber people LIDERALLY don't look as they pull out or pull in or over or undertake. Those high-powered scooters in particular. One pulled out in front of us with the rider looking behind him. The other way.
Plus parking. There would be running fist fights in the UK if people parked as close to each other as they do in Paris. You could put a fag paper between cars, sometimes, more often not.
And as for romance...
There are two pathways AI could take. The techno-optimists (like our dearest Leon) argue that this is the sign of future intelligence and AI won't take long to actually become intelligent and be able to do lots of new and exciting things. This is based off (in my view) very little evidence and more based off of the general techno-enthusiasm of a certain group of people (see the recent bubbles in metaverse, nfts, blockchain stuff, etc)
The other train of thought, which could be dubbed the techno-pessimist (which I would count myself as), sees AI at its least (but still pretty) harmful as a tool of capital to displace middle income earners in skilled jobs, where it is acceptable for the output to have a small amount of nonsense in it. To me this would be a lot of the suggestions of "enhancing healthcare with AI" or such - you turn 111 into an AI chat instead of a real person, you accept that maybe 5% of the time it just spouts gibberish, but because that is only going to hurt poor sick people anyway and to be fair human error is probably around that anyway, so who cares?
At its most harmful will just be a bullshit spewing machine that becomes recursive - AI will produce junk outputs and then those will become future sources for future AI. (This is somewhat similar to the "why Google is crap now" discussion a few weeks ago).
The other potential downside of AI is it will just become a bias enforcement machine - crap inputs in equals crap inputs out. If all the inputs are of one ideological bent (say free market capitalism) then all the outputs will continue the same practice. This is where you get the likes of Kissinger arguing for a new priestly class to interpret the rulings of AI. And you will need a class of politician to declare those findings to the plebs, because they wouldn't accept the cold calculating reason of the machine god, so you have to stick a human face on it to convince them. It becomes a great "get out of jail free" card for politicians who can essentially become the Computer Says No character from Little Britain, but about public policy instead of if you want to book a holiday.
Despite the breathless hopes of our AI fan boy member, current “AI” is misnamed. There is no real “I”. What you get out is entirely based on the prompt you give it, and given that prompt could only ever have been that output.
Dunno. Who cares? It is clearly not going to stop Macron becoming president because he already is.
(And great post on it @148grss.)
I will have to roll out my American Action Painting/Abstract Expressionist analogy. Again.
eg Jackson Pollock set up the initial conditions - paint cans, strings, holes in paint cans - and then let them create "art". Of course it was art because he was the creator of those initial conditions and he wanted to create something that was random but not random (to simplify). But without his input you would be pushed to call the end result art. Well of course you can call anything art and you would be right but if you knocked over a paint can and the contents spilled onto a canvas it wouldn't be the same.
Similarly to AI art. It is not the output itself that I would call (good) art, but it is the initial conditions input by the creator (Leon obviously a lot until he was banned for so doing). The whole thing is art but not in the way that Leon thinks it is art.
It's a real edge case today, though, and might not fly.
And then I remember the consequences for human beings of all this blind belief by gullible idiots in what machines produce.
You can hear one of the consequences here - https://youtu.be/wR1MA66Th4k?si=_72md4s9lWdE-xoY
From 2.41 minutes in when Edward Henry KC starts to question one of the prosecutors, Warwick Tatford.
As I say, it's probably just me.
So the Guardian puts out an interesting article about the fact that Leeds has the highest paid advertised jobs outside of London (I'd have expected Edinburgh).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/20/leeds-tops-league-of-places-in-the-uk-with-the-best-paying-jobs-outside-london
Yet you read the article, and nowhere in it is a link to the study or the actual data. Neither has a google search helped discover the data, just other news articles without links.
https://x.com/soncharm/status/1725283757291188323?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q